“Our very life depends on continuous acts of beginning. But these beginnings are out of our hands; they decide themselves.
Beginning precedes us, creates us. There is nothing to fear in the act of beginning.
More often than not it knows the journey ahead better than we ever could."
John O’Donohue


2 January 2020

Yes, No, Maybe 

It is true that it is always day one,
if you are feeling philosophical
and a little buoyant.

It is also true that it is always day two,
and, for that matter, day 7,729
from some marker,
and there is no doubt that
you take up this new mantle
with some wear and tear.

Which is what I was thinking this morning
because I have this spot on my thigh
that could be the stubborn memory
of a cigarette burn from those days
or could be cancer. 
And it's fine either way really
because I'm not afraid of much,
there are people who know just the thing to do,
and next to no one has viewing rights
to my thighs these days. 

There are some mornings I wake up
saying yes to anything that will listen,
like when I've been dreaming
of mountain laurel flowers shaped like starbursts
or of meeting a llama in the early morning mist
at Machu Picchu.

There are other days I wake up
saying no,
usually because I am gearing up again
to make that one catastrophic decision--
you know the one
that always wears different clothes
but leaves the same stink. 
The no's rarely stick,
heady resolve notwithstanding. 

It is better to wait on the rest
until we have some time to talk, you and I,
to catalogue that absolutes
that own us in part,
and rehearse the etymology of maybe.
We should decide if it is about 
possibility or permission. 

It's January, and I am now aware
that once you reach a certain age,
the winter is so long in coming
that you lose the autumn expecting it,
and by the time it is in hand,
the daffodils are already announcing its end.
Only the spring goes on and on in real time.

And really all I mean to say
is that you were young once--
no, not a tragedy--
and yes, you will be young again,
but differently, maybe.