Life is balanced
on a pinpoint.
Home, food, health, connections, work, meaning
sway precariously.
If one is pulled,
all is impacted:
Rocks and
Tips.
.
.
.
I’m thinking today of an extended family member who was in a serious car accident recently. One moment, all is well, the next some guy isn’t watching the road, jumps a meridian, and you’re in emergency. If you’re sole support, and you’re off work for a year of recovery, how does that impact everyone around you?
The rain has stopped
Thunder in October?
The world has changed.
The wind blows off the dead,
flings pieces of forest in a mad dance
to burial & rebirth.
I was numb,
but I felt the gentle line you drew
across my skin, blade slicing deep.
You stretched me open,
revealed my patched bones,
unscrewed the metal holding me together.
Oh, you sewed me back together,
taped over the black sutures,
and here I lie, propped up against realities,
hoping for the best.
.
.
.
It sounds so lovely and metaphorical, but it’s literal. 🙂 Successful surgery this week to remove the plates and screws that repaired my broken fibula last January. The screws were working out on their own and causing a fair bit of pain. Looking forward to returning to regular, pain-free mobility very soon!
She speaks of the alienation of senses.
vision fades
hearing lies
touch hurts
taste dulls
smell empties
What remains is the acute sense of memory
and occasionally a sense of humour
at the irony
of it all.
Embrace the new!
They declared.
Projectors, Smartboards, wifi,
Go paperless!
Let’s be a digital learning environment!
And so we did, but where has that left us
when the tech department is falling apart?
The student records can’t be accessed.
The projectors are no longer connected.
The Smartboards don’t work.
The printers won’t print.
The wifi is off-line.
At least there are new whiteboard pens to start the year.
They’re the only new technology that’s working!
.
.
.
.
Big plans to revamp the entire system are not going so well. The front lines are more than a little annoyed, but it could be worse! We could be the tech dept trying to fix all those problems at every work site! Poor techies. They (like is normal for teachers) weren’t given the resources to do their jobs properly and everyone is feeling it.
Free
might not be all it’s cracked up to be.
If where you are, you’re unhappy
what improvements do you foresee?
What will you change inside you?
Because here’s something true
unless something within is new
Your baggage’s just dragging after you!
You’re just bringing the same self you knew
The power crept quietly
on a satisfied sigh
on a grin of delight
on a curl of contentment
on a determined advance
on an astonished completion
on undeniable accomplishment,
success of a dream.
This ending
is just another circle.
Your smile is a segment of arc
in my eternity.
It wouldn’t do for you
to behave that way;
we have expectations
requiring regurgitation of
regulations. Speak as told
don’t be bold, just hold this reeking
treatise of broken society for me
and do what you are told to do.
It can’t be comfortable
in that convoluted position
but since you assume it more and more often
I can only presume that normalcy
is more painful than contortion.
Shawn L. Bird 