NOT AN EXIT

 

I haven’t written anything other than poems for several months now.  My previous routine has ceased to exist due to my changing work schedule and I increasingly feel like I have no grounding.  In this time period little graces have arrived just in time to keep me from spiraling into despair, but there is a heaviness I can’t seem to shake.  

Growing older is a blessing and a curse.  The curse part is easier to understand as my body increasingly betrays me and full freedom of movement becomes a distant memory.  Exercise can keep it at bay but not fully.  Sometimes I awaken from dreams of earlier times and other possibilities that seem cruel in my waking state.  The blessing side is less obvious and requires deeper reflection.  That reflection has been the function of my writing which, as I have pointed out, has been in decline.

This is when I thank God for poems.  They’re still there in their brevity and immediacy.  They still distill the truth and do the work of self-reflection as an antidote to self-deception.  And in the meantime I am reaching back to things I’ve written in the past 12 years since I started this writing journey to find themes that might be collected into a book(s).  

January of last year it was “Tales of the Strange & Wondrous“ followed 8 months later by “Flowers from the Dirt” and earlier this year it was “HOSPITOCALYPSE”.  The challenge now is to find a new routine and once again begin to find some meaning and create some structure out of the chaos.  Time is whipping by at an accelerating pace like I’m caught in the time distortion of being too close to a blackhole.  And I feel like I am wasting what little time I have left.

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