Day 1 — Flywheel

here

Here is the place I always am whether I like it or not, whether I’m calling it that or something else.
This morning here is a rocking chair with a small fire in a woodstove and a dog eating
loudly from her red bowl nearby.
Here is my husband snoring lightly upstairs and the sun breaking the horizon and the snow looking dingy because it is spring and the snow is old and covered in forest debris.
Here is a plane
passing overhead with a presumably light load because most of us are not travelling.
Here is a valley, a region, a country, an entire planet
talking about the same thing; worried about the same thing.
Here is full of face masks and furrowed brows in the potato chip isle.
Here, I am thinking of my dad who is sick somewhere else,
but also, because I am so worried, he is here.

I am trying to stay Here even though I want to be there.

Here is also where the divine calm resides at all times and I am trying to sense that as well.
It is hard because peace always seems to be elsewhere,
but when I accidentally stumble upon it, I am usually surprised to discover it was with me
here
all the time.
Like my sunglasses, when I am frantically searching,
are often to be found on my head.
Why don’t I ever learn to look there first?

Here is where nature resides, never rushing ahead or falling behind, but forever
simply present and exposed.
The trees shelter in place for their entire lives
and yet sing to each other through mycorrhizal networks.
They are separate, yet communal, and have much to teach us about the long game.

Here stretches and expands to hold the alternate worlds, past lives, and speculations
of the novels I now have so much time to read.
I often read here, and gratefully discover it is possible to be both here, and there.

But, where and what is there...
where and what there is…
is for another day.

_______

What I am reading, or have just read (which may or may not have inspired or informed this post):

The Overstory, by Richard Powers
An Altar in the World, by Barbara Brown Taylor
The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie