Tag Archives: slowing down

Empty Spaces

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mathew-schwartz-4GXtM_XR5zo-unsplash

Empty Spaces

The world has stilled its hectic pace, although its clocks tick on.
We stand at windows peering out, imagining what’s gone.
Rapid passings night and day, our reachings and attainings
have made way for the meantime to leave us our remainings.
There is a little secret the Swiss learned long ago
that has to do with leaving space—the worth of going slow.
Their cheese that is the richest is full of empty spaces—
its flavor made the tangier by what nature erases.
The holes are not just emptiness, for factors that have made them
create a richer cheese than the cheeses that evade them.
The blocks with larger spaces have a better taste.
In short, the empty room they leave is anything but waste.
Perhaps it is the same with the new spaces in our lives.
Perhaps the empty spaces are where the meaning thrives.

Note: Holes in Swiss cheese are created by the bacteria which change milk to cheese. Propionibacterium uses the lactic acid which is produced by other bacteria, and produces carbon dioxide gas; the gas slowly forms bubbles which makes the holes. In general, Swiss cheeses with larger eyes have a better taste.

Prompts today are Swiss, hectic, attain, secret and clock. Image by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Slow Motion

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Slow Motion

After the fuss and bother, the acquiring and attaining,
somehow life seems better without the extra straining.
Now observing takes the place of doing and of showing.
Tranquility has won out over partying and going,
with “Hold your partner” filling in for former “do-si-doing.”

 

For the dVerse Poets Quadrille prompt, Tranquility

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Scuttle Rebuttal

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Scuttle Rebuttal

We scuttle between life’s different stages
like hamsters on wheels or rats running mazes.
In childhood, we cannot wait to grow up.
We wear our pants low and mutter, “Whuzzup?”
We think when we’re teenagers, we’ll really live
as childhood passes like sand through a sieve.
As teens, all our reckoning’s fixed on afar–—
that day when we’ll finally drive our dad’s car!
Then university becomes our goal,
or life in the factory or life on the dole
if school seems a prison and we want to skip
one of the stages so we can just zip
to earning a dollar and running our lives,
buzzing right through it like bees in their hives.
Milling and rushing—careening through life.
Barely a girlfriend before we’re a wife.
Driving kids one two three from this lesson to that
until we can’t reflect where exactly we’re at.
Grandpas and grandmas, then single once more.
Losing a spouse may just open a door
to a last  phase and the end of this rhyme.
A phase where, finally, we’ll take the time
to just sit and enjoy the stage that we’re in,
now that we’re retired and resting’s no sin.
Invest in a porch swing, a hammock or cat
that gives you a reason to be where you’re at
without moving or thinking of something to do.
Just sit yourself down. Scratch the cat. Eye the view.
Life’s more than a puzzle and more than a queue.
Take time to enjoy this life that you grew!!!

 

The Daily Addictions prompt today is scuttle.

Brick Wall

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cat·a·pult  : a device in which accumulated tension is suddenly
released to hurl an object some distance, in particular.

Brick Wall

Two times in the kitchen—hurrying like a fool.
One time on the terrace when I tripped over a stool.
Three times in the hall when I stumbled on the stair.
The wall my forehead hit each time needed no repair.
Not so my skull which needs new paradigms inside
of how to live my life by slowing down my stride.

I am scared of my subconscious—it’s refusing to be tamed.
If I do not learn its language, I’m afraid I’ll soon be maimed.
When steps and mops in pails and stools taught me not at all,
my stubborn subconscious launched me at a wall,
totalling my car—a frighteningly close call.

Bruised and sore, I hear the words  the doctor said,
“Take these pills two times a day and spend five days in bed.”
Six bad falls? One totalled car? I finally do the math.
Something wants to put obstacles in my path.
It says, “Take off the running shoes. Reduce those trips to town.
Loll around a few days more in your dressing gown.
Never do more than one thing. Give each thing its time.
To think I can do all of it is simply asinine.
Why do I think that I should be continually busy?
Why go up on ladders when I know it makes me dizzy?

The less I do it seems there are more I shouldn’t do’s.
Somedays it’s an adventure just locating my shoes
and cell phone and my glasses and finally, my keys.
Then I drive to town for broccoli and come home with blue cheese.
When did it get more difficult? It seems this is all new,
and yet I wrote about those falls a year ago or two.

A catapult propels one up over the wall
and over every obstacle that could cause a fall.
Why avoid the catapult? Why think that I should be
the person I was yesterday—that one no longer me?
Ironic that the catapult instructs me to slow down,
leave prat falls to the stunt man and the circus clown.
“Put some space around the things that you think you should do.
Take some time to hear what life’s trying to tell you.
All this beauty for your eyes yet often you don’t see it.
That same beauty within you waiting for you to be it.”

Catapult is the daily prompt, but this poem certainly also works for the prompt Reprieve.

Beach Combing

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IMG_3577“Beach Sunset” bone, shell, wood, coral, sponge, beach scrub and acrylic paint, 3.5 x 11 inches, Mixed media assemblage by Judy Dykstra-Brown, March, 2016

Beach Combing

I gave nothing to the sea, so she gave nothing back.
It was as though she looked and thought, “There’s nothing that you lack.”
It’s true that I have all I need of food and friends and fun,
and yet I still lack something that’s waiting to be won.

It isn’t gained by medals, by prizes or by fame,
for it is some other thing, bereft of rank or name.
There is some magic in the world that I go looking for
that has no set place where it lives, no windowpanes or door.

I’ve found it once or twice before, in places far afield
by accident, for if you try to force it, it won’t yield.
It isn’t found at parties, a fiesta nor a fete.
If you go looking for it, the magic will abate.

It’s found in how you do things, in what manner, at what pace.
If you reach too quickly, it will vanish with no trace.
I can’t tell you how to gain it, for I fear that I don’t know.
I just know that when I found it was when I was going slow.

F

Re”tire”ment

When I was younger, my mind turned on a dime.
I did what I had to do in very little time.
But now that I am older, things don’t go so fast.
I’m not “spur-of-the-momentish” as I was in the past.

I don’t throw big parties as I did in former days,
for dealing with the details just puts me in a haze.
I can’t do many things at once without getting confused.
Now I simply write my blog while once I danced and boozed!

At first I felt ashamed of how my life is slowing down,
hating that I do not seek the company of town.
But then I noted patterns in nature around me
and saw that this is simply how our lives are meant to be.

Each thing in its season and each thing in its time
is how our lives are ordered—to accept this is sublime.
Why do I need to live my youth and middle age again?
Why not just accept that this is how my life has been

and go on to the next stage without sadness or regret—
going on to see just how much better life can get?
Yes, it is the pits to get arthritic, slow and hazy;
but we are compensated by excuses to be lazy!

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “The Heat is On.” Do you thrive under pressure or crumble at the thought of it? Does your best stuff surface as the deadline approaches or do you need to iterate, day after day to achieve something you’re proud of? Tell us how you work best.