Deciduous

I wanted to write a poem today.

Something shifted, yesterday, and I felt deep in my gut,

That stirring. That could be excitement,

Or imminent diarrhoea,

Or arousal,

But is definitely movement. Change.

And I wanted to write a poem, but instead I tidied up

And I ate lunch, and I did the laundry,

And then, when I could have written a poem,

I went outside, and walked between the drowsy trees,

Layers of warm, brown beneath my feet,

A cocoon of gold about me,

A shedding of a million tiny engines that whirred and worked to keep the whole alive

Until the earth tilted, and the light grew sparse

And the work became a burden too great to carry,

And the trees let go of past endeavours,

Preserving themselves for another spring, another tilt, a warmer light.

I wanted to write a poem today,

But I walked within the world and felt it speak to me,

In falling whispers,

And I recognised it was my time to be quiet.

Authors note: I know. I wrote a poem about wanting to write a poem but not writing a poem, only I did write the poem. Which is confusing, but I didnt write this poem yesterday, which is the today in the narrative, which I inhabited from today, which would have been tomorrow in the narrative. You see?

Yesterday I woke up to a brief break in employment - I finished one, gruelling job, after a frantic finishing period, particularly in these last few days as the storm blew through outside my window. I will take up another in a week's time, with new learning and new challenges, and the same, expensive skills. I say expensive not because they pay me a lot, they do not, but because my work costs me a lot, its challenging work. I left myself this pause between and found it hard to justify why, though no one questioned it. My instinct, when asked, was to talk about all the doing I planned to do in this interlude. but there is a lesson, always, in nature, no?