contending with shadows

it has come time for me to face my work again. to turn a hard cold eye to it, and attempt to fashion it into something publishable. those words seem strange to me because i don't view poetry that way, a product of manufacture. that, perhaps is my greatest liability (i have many).

having recently been told in the most brutal way that i need to revisit my manuscript, i am now faced with the task of doing so. and so i shall.

sometimes, change comes that is unexpected. we grow through much pain, but we grow. that is the task before me now, to not shy away from the pain of growth, but to

breathe into it,

as sophie says,

surrender to the screaming hip.

i have no more foresight at this juncture of my life than i have had at any previous. i only know how to trust. i said last night,

there are two doors.

what's on the other side

i don't know.

you see, i never know. none of us have that luxury.

i had a thought last night that i haven't had in a great while. that i wished some hawk was still circling overhead, looking out for me. that was then though.

how to use my winter break. i had thought to escape, to run to the hills and be alone for a while, but i may stay and reckon with shadows. with the darker nature of my life. dig out, as it were, the piles of papers under my desk. dust off the manuscript that has been sheathed since the dogpile. and dogpile it was. a most unlovely public flogging of an event.

but i'm still standing.

what does the future hold.

i do not know. but i trust.