I tried to come up with a poem, or a quote, or a photograph, or something to share with you. To mark the moment. But, alas, I couldn't find anything that spoke to me, or felt like it would speak to you. So I'll try speaking to you myself, unmediated.

After much conversation -- and, of course, much soul searching -- Barbara and I agreed that it's time to let go of Lectio Poetica. All things emerge and endure only for a time, then dissolve back into the silence and stillness from which they arose.

Early Sunday morning, I awaken from a nightmare about the U.S. Presidential election. With only two days left, a sickening sense of dread that all may be lost looms over me like a thunderhead crackling with malevolent energy.
 
I stare at the ceiling. I worry. What if racism, misogyny, xenophobia, greed, hatred, ignorance, and insanity actually win?  

​

Traveling Through the Dark
By William Stafford

If you live with chronic pain, as I do, eventually you’ll hear almost every imaginable  remedy for what ails you. As soon as some wise and kindly soul in the vicinity discovers you’re in pain, whether you ask for it or not, whether you want it or not, he or she will offer some tidbit of well-intentioned advice.
 
Nails on a chalkboard could not be more annoying. Normally I grit my teeth, smile, and scope out the nearest exit.
 
You’re Joking
 
Years ago, for example, as I was waiting for an appointment with my deep tissue massage therapist, a woman came in, started chattering away, asking nosey questions about which of my body parts were in pain, and for how long. Before I knew it, she was pressing a business card into my palm.

Walking along the little creek near McIntosh Lake this morning, the air brisk, sky dense with clouds, head down, brow heavy with rumination—I jerked upright suddenly, startled by golden sparks of lightning flashing across my field of vision.
 
No, I wasn’t having a seizure. A flock of goldfinches chased each other from tree to tree, pausing briefly, little bursts of color, zipping here and there. Such beauty! All thought ceased. I became all eye, all ear, all here.

Winter is a time of hunger, a season of searching for sufficient sustenance to survive the frozen, denuded landscapes of nature, of life, and of work.

For animals in the wild, sources of food become more difficult to locate. Waterways become covered over with ice. Insects hibernate and die. Vegetation shrinks back to barren sticks, often buried beneath the snow. More animals die in winter than any other season. It can be a risky, terrifying, and lonely time.

“Now I become myself. It’s taken / Time, many years and places; / I have been dissolved and shaken, / Worn other people’s faces . . .” —May Sarton

Rainer Maria Rilke was just 29 years old when he began writing his now famous Letters To A Young Poet, to Franz Xaver Kappus, a German military student who was 19 when the two began corresponding in 1903. Kappus had nervously sent Rilke some poems, asking his opinion.

“You ask whether your verses are any good,” Rilke replied, with tenderness. “You ask me. You have asked others before this . . . I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now.

Sunday morning, July 12, 2015. Seven of us sit for a few moments in silence. To my left, Barbara quietly recites a blessing by John O’Donahue, which contains these words:
 
May this be a safe place
Full of understanding and acceptance,
Where you can be as you are,
Without the need of any mask
Of pretense or image.