I can hardly wait
for the next moment
and yet the present
demands its due;
to listen to the house sigh,
to see the floor’s peace,
to feel soap – warm on pots,
to smell wine’s fruit,
to taste labour.
Now beckons.
And when I
slip now on
like the well-tailored
time it is, You
settle my past, You
unsettle my future.
Now beckons.
Each breath in
I am
Each breath out
still here
Between each
now.
In this now
I am utterly
where I am:
under blanket,
fire near,
pen ready,
and you at hand.
I descry
your eye
on mine
amid these
words that
I scratch.
Gazing out
from the unformed
white light of page
your sight reframes
my seeing and so my so
very important priorities
collect as refuse
at feet.
You call and I collapse,
dying to be a full moon fogged –
softened and softening:
a full stop’s
negative.
Every now and then it strikes me that I am ridiculously rich.
I have a family that loves me. I have work that is meaningful and colleagues whom I enjoy. I have good health, and am oddly enamored with walking, which allows me to realize that the world is a strange and wondrous place. I find myself believing in a God who is merciful; neither deterministic nor indifferent.
My life isn’t perfect, but I don’t expect perfection and am okay with blips in my life. Sometimes I even laugh at them, which brings me to a comment I heard at a youth event last night where I spoke on behalf of my school. “How are things going?” I asked one of the leaders, wondering how things had evolved throughout the weekend. “Good. In fact too good!” was her reply. “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, things just can’t go this well; I’m afraid something is around the corner.”
I understand her anxiety. In fact I share it. When things are going well, I too get nervous. After all, I reason, nobody deserves ridiculous riches, including yours truly! Why do we think this way? Are we dealing with deeply hidden, yet powerfully prevailing expectations of corrections? Do we imagine our lives to be like the stock market; hoping for a certain incline in fortune, yet recognizing that market corrections are inevitable? Are we suspicious of ridiculous riches, and happy to settle for solid yet certain gains? Do we expect the worst; and derive a softer satisfaction from skirting disappointments?
Perhaps there is too much self-analysis in the above?
Maybe, but probably not; in fact it seems that some analysis of sources of pleasure and pain is a fitting and salutary strategy. It is good to know the why of our grins and whence of our tears. And as I do precisely this, it seems to me that too often I expect a lot from tomorrow and never cash in on today; where I find joy in a flower’ s fragrance, in a wine’s bouquet, in a word well turned.
In the end it seems that what most matters is a return to life’s simplicity in the midst of the chaos that simply is. Such a return enables us to see “riches” differently; neither a question of desert nor destiny but attention. This attention comes as both gift and discipline; sometimes together, sometimes apart, but always with the startling realization that there is more: more than we can ask or imagine.
