Friday, March 24, 2023

TO FORGE A NEW SOLITUDE (FINAL VERSION)

 

maybe it is necessary to forge a new solitude

to stop imbibing bad news and then when you shut it off

to stop being its serf, to then slump like a ragdoll

or be renewed like a wind up toy as though you had

no footfall on earth.

maybe we need to just go back before

there was any news at all

not to be in perpetual motion, not to keep

putting the towers back in the skies

not to keep up with world wide gossip 

sometimes only to rest and abide.

not to keep testing yourself for the Plague,

twenty four, twenty four hours a day

to go home. as far as you can make it

and on foot.to live by softened lamplight

for a long time, or watching the leaves turn gold in the wind

the gathering of blue rain in small pools

the runoff of streams; to eat your breakfast quietly

with rosily ripened strawberries and ecru cream

to breathe in the stars and apple trees.

to pray to God on living sod.

not to be weighted with what is expected of you

from social experiments and censuses, contraptions...

gathering all statistics near

as though they were your children.

the heart is not a commodity;

we are not weather vanes subservient to the wind

we are not meant to give in to all this

so that the soul sobs like a small child

who has lost her way and cannot be comforted

by the seashell pearl emptiness of Time

mary angela douglas 7 january 2022;24 march 2023

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