Oh, I have let my lonely tell me lies
And sometimes I’ve believed them
Committing days and
stealing nights
Allowing worry to
both limit and abuse
imagination
While I wear busy
like a badge
A prize
for losing languor
Making Sabbath
an exotic thing,
like vacation,
someday,
Later.
And lonely says
TOMORROW
if I seem to hear the drone
of my work inside its echo
and its landscape of alone
forgetting how to spell repose
and how it feels to play
But thankfully, it doesn’t last
Eventually, Always, Someday
Someone loves me back to now
trusting I’ll recall the ways
to practice ancient healing arts
like naps
and tea
and Sundays
Free again from lonely’s trance
For what then would I pine today?
What slow and lovely longing blooms
here as I sit in quiet sabbath space
just a little longer than
the average fast food drive through takes?
As I feel the restoration
of unscheduled time
unstructured space,
of a coffee-scented,
slowed-down,
unreasonably sunny
summer’s day | Of a beautifully boring,
lazy afternoon,
an evening blessed
with noisy bugs,
and neighbor voices
leaking through
screen windows
of another age
Of weekends framed in campfire smoke,
radios and flickering light,
even though full sunset doesn’t
come till 10 O’clock
The endless day
turns endless night
all endless summer long
And I love the seasons, all, I do
I’m not really yearning
for a summer of forever
or for yesterday returning.
Just the power of the schedule-less
The rest inside of willingness,
Practicing choice over obligation
And opening that door in me,
to empty days
of restoration
to all the space
and weeds
and breeze
that endless summer
used to be
Then in that space of nowness
free of lonely’s busy lies
Maybe I can
hear
feel
see
what life
has been
asking of me
this year
this life
this time.
- RB Weeks 11-29-17 |
