As I enter this new decade, life becomes more precious, more luminous. It’s off the hook gorgeous to be 60 and be alive! I can detach from the stories I told myself as a child, and instead radically befriend myself and awake to my essential goodness.
Paradoxically, on some days everything feels beautiful, everything feels sad and I find it hard to be with a feeling of impending doom and despair even while the world turns up for me in all its magnificence. The day this poem spouted out of me was one of those unexpected days when to dos drop away and the entire day becomes a privilege to witness.
There is an art and discipline to waking.
Even after 21,949 mornings I am floored by the first caress of light
reimagining a new and ancient conversation with daybreak
that has different plans for me
than the one I’m making
woven from the fine thread of my dreaming.
And still the raucous, rough night gods
threaten to trample over this fragile moment.
Belligerent outliers prowling the frontiers of loss and heartbreak.
Then it could be a day I don’t want to see out till the end.
Or a day I want to never end.
But look, here, I am alive, I am free.
No night things have a hold over me.
I gently, tenderly cradle myself awake
and choose to be loved into the sensual miracle of first light regardless.
Name the first bird call,
ridiculous blue of sky,
dripping into its ocean similar.
Find new words for this early display of grandeur:
Swoon, exult, adore
Be awed, astonished, entranced, seduced.
No words just a quiet attention to grace.
I dance with you
I breathe with you
Thankful for this day
Grateful for this day
Arise.
