How often
does our prayer to
accept the things that cannot change
become an excuse for complacency?
How often
do we turn away from the possible
just because it’s difficult?
How often
to we tell ourselves ‘it’s always been’
and fail to see that something else could be?
How often
do we rail against those
who gentle encourage change when
they demonstrate another way?
How often
do we shout our certainty
when we should listen and see
wider horizons of possibility?
Within old skin
undoing
rebuilding
becoming
rebounding
safe growing places
bright glowing spaces
this microcosm populated
by homunculi
stitching new skin.
The vehicles wind along the highway
a immobile caterpillar
stalled by a moment
when the physics of motion, energy, and force
spun unfortunates into each other’s path
with a crash
that froze the goings
and made everyone in the long line
contemplate mortality.
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.
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The stretch of the TransCanada Highway between Sicamous and Salmon Arm is a frequent site of accidents. I usually count on having to detour from work 3 times each winter. Today was the third, and there are 2 months of winter left. Our thoughts are with those who were involved in the accident, and medi-vacced out.
I’m moving through molasses
going slowly,
thinking like my thoughts are spilled ink
too dark to decipher.
Winter weather draws the sky closer,
closeting us in cloud,
so much white is blinding.
Days are short, but oh, so, slow
and cold.
Far from home,
surrounded by brown desert,
in a hotel room, alone,
a podcast plays the annual
Christmas Eve story
and the holiday arrives
despite the lack of snow,
gifts,
cookies,
tree,
or children.
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.
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CBC plays this beautiful Forsyth short story every year, and I always have a little tear over it. The late Alan Maitland was a wonderful reader. http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-the-shepherd-edition-2016-1.3907204
We’re counting down now.
Hour by hour.
Minute by minute.
Escape’s almost in our power.
We are waiting.
The cloud reclines darkly above the lake.
The snow line drops lower.
The cold creeps and seethes.
Inside, bricks channel the chill.
Children vibrate, “It’s coming! It’s coming!”
It’s so hard to sit still and concentrate.
Adults sniffle and cough, mutter, “Soon. Soon.”
They dream of freedom, warmth, of sleeping in.
Christmas holidays can’t come
quickly enough.
Max and Jenn were in our grade eight classes
and our grade nine classes,
but then, they were not.
Where are they? asked the teachers.
Whispers replied to one another in the back rows,
I saw them outside The Royal Anne.
They’re turning tricks. Doing drugs.
We blinked at one another that our peers
would make such choices,
muttered, How terrible.
We slowed down our lives to peer into the
accident scene of their lives
from a safe distance,
but did any of us go downtown,
and offer them a different option?
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.
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This is a forty-year old memory. Where are they now, I wonder?
I’ve fallen into a fog
that fills my head with cotton
and adds sandpaper to my throat.
Bed sounds like such a good idea,
but work requires my presence.
Mentally, I’m home, buried under quilts.
Physically, I supervise workers,
who all wish they were home in bed.
We may lack spirit for spirit week;
but today is pajama day.
How apropos.
Shawn L. Bird 