Leavings
Do I walk the long kilometers of beach
to look for the next shell
or stand stable, like that woman
casting and recasting her hook,
patiently waiting to pull her world in to her?
I’m gathering things
that I’ll collect into stories–
pinning them down to use like words.
Nothing wrong in finding meaning
through a piece of driftwood, a stone or shell.
Objects are only things
we cast our minds against
like images against a screen–
a shadow glimpsed crossing a window shade.
My shadow cast in front of me
is such a different thing
from one I cast behind.
In the first, I am constantly hurrying
to catch up to what I’ll never catch up to.
In the other, I am leaving behind
what I can only keep by walking away from it.
I take this place along with me in clear images–
not as they were, but as my mind has cast them;
so every picture taken of the same moment is different,
each of us seeing it through our unique lens.
We cast these things in bronze or silver-gelatin,
stone, clay or poetry.
A grandma holds out pictures of her children
and her grandchildren. See? Her life’s work.
And then this and this, without further effort on her part.
I share stories of children I don’t know
who gently unwind fishing line from a struggling gull,
hearts found on the beach
or other treasures nestled in a pile of kelp.
I find my world in both these findings and departings;
the leaving each morning to go in search of them
the part I find most exhilarating–
perhaps teaching this woman
of the death-themed night-terrors
not to worry.
That longer leaving is just a new adventure.
People who do not remember let me slip away
when I would have held on, given any encouragement.
Yet fingers, letting go, flex for that next adventure.
Life is all of us letting go constantly–
taking that next step away from and to.
A white shell. I have left it there
turned over to the brown side,
so someone else can discover it, too.
This is a rewrite of an earlier poem, in response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “If You Leave.”Life is a series of beginnings and endings. We leave one job to start another; we quit cities, countries, or continents for a fresh start; we leave lovers and begin new relationships. What was the last thing you contemplated leaving? What were the pros and cons? Have you made up your mind? What will you choose?
I love the picture. I can’t think about leavings or beginnings anymore. Too many leavings lately. Too many young people who never lived at all.
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Every month or week I learn of another friend who has died…like leaves falling from a tree. My childhood “idol” died yesterday…The “big” girl down the block. I’ve probably seen her four or five times since she married..now I wonder why I didn’t make more of an effort to see her.
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Are those clams on the beach? That beach goes on and on…….Neat picture.
The human spirit can’t be still. It needs to seek new, taste, view all images. It needs to better itself, seek other lands if that’s what it takes. Age doesn’t seem to affect the spirit, it wants to always grow, intelligence increases into old age, until the body becomes like an overripe fig and falls from the tree.
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L–they are jelly fish! They beached themselves by the thousands.
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That is wild, you can see little trails where they tried to move. The storm must have beached them, poor little critters.
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Or may be trails they made while shrinking! Either way, poor babies!!!
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Didn’t know they got so big. On a trip to Rocky Point, Mexico one of the kids had a jellyfish encounter, wee little one.
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I’ve had a few also. Even the microscopic ones, when you enter a cloud of them, can be pretty annoying. like swimming in fiberglass!
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“I find my world in both these findings and departings …” I wish life was easier, but it’s not. To embrace change is a sign of strength and courage. Let it go or it will swallow the future. I loved reading this poetic wonder.
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Thanks, Olga. I think I like writing because it teaches me what I’ve learned but might otherwise forget.
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Yes, writing brings that out in me also.
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Olga–I love your line, “To embrace change is a sign of strength and courage. Let it go or it will swallow the future.” That is a poem in itself.
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I do have my poetic moments when inspired. Your poetry did just that. Thanks!
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I left it all and now I have all new. Okay, it’s been two and a half years already.
I should stop calling it new.
Lovely stroll on the beach with you.
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I left my all fourteen years ago and it still seems new, Manja, so I’m not surprised that two and a half years seems like the snap of a finger to you. For some, life is new every day. I really do feel like this–especially since retirement, when there is so much more freedom to do exactly what we wish without excessive preplanning.
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New life every day sounds just as it should be. 🙂 Wishing you much joy.
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Do you live in Mexico, Manja? If so, where?
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Ohh, no, Mexi is a nickname from my surname. 🙂 I live in Tuscany, Italy, and my homeland is Slovenia, just over the border. And yet all is different.
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So interesting the variety of places we all come from yet we meet here in the same place. I love this.
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