Questions Before Dark

QUESTIONS BEFORE DARK

Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you? Are the corners
sharper or rounded off? Did you
live with death? Make decisions
that quieted? Find one clear word
that fit? At the sun’s midpoint
did you notice a pitch of absence,
bewilderment that invites
the possible? What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again? Did you set a straw
parallel to the river, let the flow
carry you downstream?

– Jeanne Lohmann –
(from The Light of Invisible Bodies)

This week, in my “third Wednesday” writers’ circle, I read this poem into the centre. As it had been at least a month since we’d all been together, our check-in was as rich in stories and perspective as each of us and our past month’s involvements. I wanted to create a pause, and to allow for a shift into the business of writing. A poem can do that.

One of our members liked the poem’s permission to learn from what we drop and drop again. Another was struck by “the bewilderment that invites possibilty.” My breath caught at the naming of those days living with death and how its presence in mine over the past months has nudged me to recognize the new life landscape in which I now walk.

But mostly, it was the poem’s presupposition that this day, any day, can change me. And from its conclusion, that I could let the river’s flow carry me downstream. Effortlessy. If I allowed it.

Big sigh…as I let those words, those questions, and their invitations settle in me.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.