Merry Christmas everyone!
...or should I say betwixtmas, as I sat here, for more than the first time today, and check what the date actually is! This is a time, I relish! I look forward to coming home, having a few days to clean up the house, reflect on the year, and seek out what to focus on for the following year. - How do you like to spend this time?
Much as I do love coming home, I also am so thankful that this year I was able to get to be with family to celebrate Christmas. I loved last year, having my first friend-mas but there is something special about being a family together. I headed down on the 23rd, completely forgetting I have booked myself onto Charmaine Pollard's Christmas Eve Poetry Workshop. This is how I found myself Christmas Eve morning, sat in my sister's study, loading up zoom.
I don't know whether it was that I was still tired from the drive, or whether being somewhere different was playing on my mind but for the first time in a long time, I really struggled to write. This wasn't the prompts or the people - just I think my mind was clouded. Reading back I can see that reflected in my writing. We finished by allowing this wonderful poem Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye to inspire our own writing about Kindness. I continued to struggle. So an hour later, taking what Charmaine had asked us about being kind to ourselves, and taking heed of the line I had written,
"I want to feel alive and I know that perhaps that means wriggling out of comfort, throwing off the duvet , and walking in the rain; perhaps life will open some surprises for me"
I donned my wet weather gear and went for a walk. My sister lives near a disused rail track and this is where I headed. As I walked the tree-lined track, sheltered in the graffiti decorated tunnels, inspiration came and I began to speak out words, that I hope will encourage you for the end of this year
I KNOW
I know that trees grow
over years and years
some centuries-old
and even though
we don't see each incremental step unfold
I know they grow
and so
with 21 about to end
and 22 yet to be penned
taking inspiration from the trees
I apply to their truth to belong to me
though growth seemed invisible
I know we've grown amongst it all
Комментарии