A Night With No Dawn

The Big Self Watches the Small Self

Look at her, checking her watch again,
worried there’s not enough time. Not
enough minutes or hours to do all the urgent
or beautiful things she longs to do—
a list that unspools out of each second—
all those things she is certain must be done.
She how she squirms, how she bites her lip,
as if her unease will make time open up
like a peony. Oh sweetheart who I have lived
with for years, who I have sometimes mistaken
for myself, I see you. It is so easy right now
to be easy with you, a relief, really, not to judge you
for your worry, but to love you for how deeply
you care, how much you want to be in service.
There is a time outside of time in which
you exist, this timelessness from which
I am watching you–imagine a lake
with no shore. A night with no dawn.
A self with no sense of where she might end.

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer ~

Every morning, I’m greeted by three poems in my inbox. The most recent regular arrival is from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, self-named WordWoman. I love the simplicity of her writing. Accessible. Lyrical. Evocative. Most every one of her poems, I slip into my “keeper” file to pass forward, like I did last week in my writers’ circle. Like I am here, this morning, with you.

I’m touched by this poem’s tenderness. Referring to her little self as “sweetheart,” something I say regularly to myself. Encouraging her/me to slow down, pause, breathe. Noticing the worry. Reassuring her/me that there’s enough time to do what needs to get done.

I love this poem for seeing how we care and for naming that it’s because we care so much and so deeply, we worry.

I’m soothed by the reminder that my big self is always watching my small self from that timeless place, between the knowing and the not knowing, where infinite possibilities reside.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.