“Worrying is praying for what you don’t want.” This quote and the tornadoes in Dallas this afternoon, trying to get a hold of friends and imagining what they might be feeling as the roaring passes so near, gave birth to a poem.
It is this thing that, when allowed to grow
larger than reality, grinds momentum to a screeching halt,
damns normal to a remote corner.
Waiting, stomach lurching, tears pushing,
the mind struggles to insert sense
where there is an obscuring haze
over every inch of thought.
One only gently engaged in this slowly entangling dance
with what is not desired, can be described as nearly okay,
even in the snares of attachment to outcome,
can look out on a budding branch against a clear spring sky
and accept its beauty as a gift, perspective
of a something larger than self pulling them in
to relative emotional safety, for a while,
until the next uncertainty.
Transcending completely the periodic waves
of inordinate concern (different than an impetus
to constructive action, rather a road to inertia)
for what one cannot control,
swimming only in the ocean of attentive detachment,
being a consistent positive force carrying on
unhindered and composed, can take a lifetime.
I’m working on it, little by little, day by day.