Poetry 12-26-2024

This is my last post of 2024. I’m not sure what this new year will bring, or how much strife and struggle will be faced. I am reminding myself to find hope. In the kindness of my own heart as well as the goodness of other people I know. I hope you are getting some reflective time this week, to think about the year ahead, the things you need to prioritize and the things you are ready to let go of. I hope you are resting up for the fight to come.

Here’s a poem that was inspired by one of my favorite humans. Thank you Mary Oliver, for all the gracious insight into this wild and weird ride of life.

Built to Survive

And oh how it pains me,
this disastrous cause
so far removed from the fresh, cold fields
and the dying gray-pink
of November dusk

I am caught in the trappings
of an ever-present demand
create, create, create
sell, and buy, and break the book's spine
over the truncated timeline,
more concerned for a deadline
than the beautiful present view
before my own dead line

We do not see the muskrat
in this way go
He does not build with wet, cold reeds
and fallen branches
to impress the critic

He builds to survive
He creates to have warm shelter
from the uncertain storms of life
He does what he does, because he knows
no other way

How it pains me
this rushing through my words
and upheaval of capricious page numbers
flipping and fighting and settling
for the shallow pond,
when my heart is an ocean
and this art is my shelter
its honesty, my survival
the only trueness left
in the short and tiresome struggle
of this one wild life.