Sunday, April 19, 2009

the moments between every breath

Here I am sitting outside our house where this poem came to me. I could not figure how to use graphics to illustrate the poem so I just put in these pictures.









the tug back & forth



life equals tension,

what has less disturbance and conflict than death?

if one just accepts whatever “is” as sufficient in itself,
then it’s like a little death,
for all we are then is passive--
flotsam & jetsam washed hither and thither by the waves,
there’s no need to act,
no list of things that need doing,
no push for a future that needs fulfilling,
no living, just existing,

no sense of divine discomfort
due to the conflict between what we expect,
maybe what we hope for,
and what actually manifests before us,

in life there are many continuums
upon which different parts of us take a stand,
and we are pulled, stretched, frustrated, enlarged,
as we seek to decide where, among all the choices,
we will come down,

I write this outside as I wish for a return of the red-shouldered hawks
who two years ago gamboled before me,
and I wait for the pizza I ordered to find me,
I feel the call of the school work that needs doing,
the garden that needs tending,

we can hope for the dispensation of an order to our universe,
but, if we actually expect it,
we deny the tension inherent within the moments between every breath,

for as long as we are gifted with actual existence
we have to accept what actually happens
and at the same time to hope and work for
how we want the world to be,

life is tension,
and, all too soon, there will be no worry,
the continuums will not continue
for our current consciousness that assumes, falsely,
that the future can be planned and enforced,
and yet still has to act in hope to tack against chance’s wind,

how wonderful it can be to live fully in that battleground
where expectation and reality,
where what we want and what actually is,
tug each other back and forth,
and each new moment surprises us.

by Henry Walker
April 17, ‘09


Here I am looking up into the tree where a little over two years ago I saw the hawks below.












These are the hawks I saw two years ago in March.

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