December Special Edition
"When I’m quiet, that’s when the truth emerges." -Louise Glück
Dear reader,
If you’re reading this today, on the last day of the year, I hope you’re warm. I’m experiencing a new painful stage of the wintering process after losing someone too dear to me. I’ll write about it soon/someday/when the words find me.
Until then, I’m writing to you to remind you that we are alive. That time slips by without noticing the grip getting looser. We can’t spend our days in silent patience, waiting for spring. We must sit with our feelings: the good, the bad and the too-ugly-to-process. We must keep living, one day at a time.
Poetry for the soul
1. After Reading Kobayashi Issa’s The Spring of My Life On My 49th Birthday by Dobby Gibson
On a dull December day it’s never noon
more briefly, though what a relief
to look around and realize our lies, in the long run,
won’t last long.
I feel like the nail
holding up someone else’s painting.
My thoughts are the loose thing
in the dishwasher only I can hear.
When I say, Snow, what will become of this world?
it says, I was not taught future tense.
Through the window,
after the heavy storm, I can follow mysterious
paw prints to the spot along the fence
where, in summer, the neighbors like to whisper.
They’ve taken their secrets inside.
It’s left a silence so complete, so free
of ambition, it feels possible to know forgiveness,
which hammered thinner than memory
carries a brighter light.