How easy the distraction is
my brain chatters to itself
in four directions, I imagine
a computer search, files
scrolling up the screen
too quick to read or stop
this flow. This is the source
of both poem and ponder.
This is my well of wish and worry.

Today I see a different need.
Perhaps Zen practice, or Gestalt therapy.
Something to slow down my brain,
something to give me balance.

a morning of small cold thoughts
outside the temperature minus 19 C
inside only 17
furnace doesn’t hum his usual tune
brain hums one worry after another

Day 18

I took my own Internet blackout break in not posting to WordPress yesterday.
I could have joined their protest, but the banner version was a bit too easy to miss, while the full blackout version seemed more for U.S. citizens who could send mails to their local representatives.  So, I just didn’t post at all.

That means today, I have two small stones to write.

small attentions

a small device for measuring
hums an unfamiliar tune, my cat
stops in his kitty-paw path
along my desktop, eyes fixed
upon this curiosity. His gaze
is steady, but as I watch
his eyes move, a small motion
not  quiver but shiver,
a shimmer of movement
so swift, almost invisible,
his small attention a deep
and thorough meditation
before his body loses tension,
relaxes into his usual pose
of inward-facing cat.

Day 19  messy desk, messy mind

under the paper and pens
the notebooks and journals
post-it notes and crossed-out drafts
poems are waiting to be birthed
a marvelous mess of words and metaphor

Carol A. Stephen