choose the strands

shorn   

I feel shorn,

I escape my responsibilities, for a time,
and retreat with myself,
strand after strand seems to pull away from me
and erase themselves from my “to do” list,

I find myself at my most basic
as a body hard hiking a trail,
as a spirit who reattaches strand after strand
to trees and rocks and streams,
and today to great elk who rebuild their connections
in a remote valley in the Smokies,

it’s like what can happen when you close your eyes,
and forget for awhile,
then there’s a freshness when you remember again
it can be even more like turning off a computer,
it can then reboot
and remember how to be itself again,

days later I feel myself reorganizing the weeks ahead
for I feel enough freshness and energy again
to imagine fulfilling the possibilities that call
to who I can be with the right effort.

by Henry H. Walker
December 7, ’12