Envy and bitterness
leaching through messages
Attacking success,
perseverence, achievement.
Pick them apart.
Minimize them to maximize you?
Hey dude,
Are you compensating?
Facing ‘if such unremarkable folk
can do it,
why can’t you?’
Is wondering why they’ve won
making you feel useless?
Um.
Maybe the difference is
they quit making excuses
and just got it done?
.
Ramona spent the weekend racing around
The agility arena with her latest training partner,
Sewing personalized dog coats for friends,
Feeding a platoon of poodles
And a concert of birds,
Laughing,
Doing,
Playing.
Ramona didn’t dwell on the degeneration
That made most days painful;
She didn’t focus on the losses,
The quotidian agonies of aging.
I posted a plaintive photo, poor dog begging,
“Play with me, Mom?”
Ramona typed back, “So why aren’t you playing?”
Mere hours later, Ramona left the earth.
Her last words to me ring a challenge
Amid these pain-filled days. We have just one life to embrace
What brings us joy. Despite all the grief,
The sun still rises; there are things to do. Today, find time
to play.
.
.
.
Rest in Peace, Ramona Stirling
An unexpected opportunity
A lovely surprise.
Or not.
Thwarted by absence.
Then presence.
Nothing’s ever quite what’s imagined.
Intention yields to alteration
or obliteration.
Wishes wasted by
reality.
Nevertheless, we continue
to try.
Some of us
have more to contain
to be little rays of sunshine,
day to day,
but that doesn’t mean
it doesn’t do us more good
to be sunshine
than for us to complain
about our rain.
Valley green like velvet in the morning light
waves rippling, sun twinkling;
sun stars captured on water,
dazzling.
Everywhere are lush reminders
of blessing
rising with the water,
over-flowing with the creeks,
sliding with the mud.
Blessings and curses.
It could be worse.
It could be worse
than being trapped in paradise.
This day is wrapped in grey,
tied with a bow.
I know that whatever I say
you must decide whether
to find gloom in the grey,
or bloom in the glow of the bow.
“Isn’t it interesting,” the old lady mused,
“How people can have such different pictures of someone.”
Not really.
Especially when one always looks through a petty and critical lens,
and the other is open to receive love and kindness.
You see what you look for,
after all.
Four lanes of traffic gush past
the single stunted sunflower
stretching through a cleft in the pavement,
blooming in adversity.
Your displeasure wafts off you like
the shimmering waves of a manure pile in July.
You reject optimism and trust.
You will let no sunshine disturb your dung beetles.
Shawn L. Bird 