Monday 29 December 2014

A "welcoming Something Dance" for the new year

It's been a beautiful holiday so far. Now my partner and I are heading up the coast to celebrate the New Year with his family. I've been thinking about time, as many of us do at the new year. For me it's more pronounced this year, as it's been a time of enormous change for me. When I quit drinking, I didn't really believe the folks who talked about getting sober as the beginning of a process, but it does seem to be what's going on here. Sometimes these days I'm not sure where I'm headed with it. (Except staying sober, which I'm pretty darn certain about!) But I do know what I need to do is to be open to the world, and to myself, whatever that looks like. Primrose wrote a wonderful post on this subject yesterday. And the other day, when I was organizing a bunch of paperwork, (it's not all fun and games and tea and cookies here on my days off!) I came across a poem by Charles Wright that I'd tucked aside a few years ago and then forgotten, and I thought I'd share that in lieu of my own words.

Wishing you peace and joy in the new year. And dancing!

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Bedtime Story

The generator hums like a distant ding an sich.  
It's early evening, and time, like the dog it is,  
                                                                                 is hungry for food,  
And will be fed, don't doubt it, will be fed, my small one.  
The forest begins to gather its silences in.  
The meadow regroups and hunkers down  
                                                                            for its cleft feet.  

Something is wringing the rag of sunlight  
                                                                  inexorably out and hanging.  
Something is making the reeds bend and cover their heads.  
Something is licking the shadows up,  
And stringing the blank spaces along, filling them in.  
Something is inching its way into our hearts,  
                              scratching its blue nails against the wall there.  

Should we let it in?  
                                       Should we greet it as it deserves,  
Hands on our ears, mouths open?  
Or should we bring it a chair to sit on, and offer it meat?  
Should we turn on the radio,  
                                                     should we clap our hands and dance  
The Something Dance, the welcoming Something Dance?  
                               I think we should, love, I think we should.

-by Charles Wright (from his book Scar Tissue)

6 comments:

  1. Happy New Year Thirsty. I'm looking forward to seeing what 2015 is going to bring to us all on this journey to who-knows-where. X

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    1. Thanks, Sue! Happy new year to you, too. xo

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  2. Thirsty, I so agree with you- at about 14 months alcohol-free for me, the changes keep happening- in a mostly very good way. Surprises keep coming- and, as you say, remaining open and available, authentic- it is soooo different from shutting down and hiding in a bottle. Love this poem!

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    1. Carrie, it's great to hear you're doing so well, and that good changes keep on coming. Glad you liked the poem, too! xo

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  3. the only thing I'm certain about is staying sober - I like that!

    one of the mainstays of English law is the presumption of innocence, and there's a famous judgement concerning it:

    "Throughout the web of the English criminal law one golden thread is always to be seen - that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner's guilt."

    well, sobriety is the golden thread throughout the web of my life. whatever shape that web will take, and whatever havoc the dog Time can wreak upon it.

    thank you for that wonderful poem. one to add to my mental Golden Treasury.

    glad to hear how you're doing on the paperwork challenge. have been wondering how you've been getting on! it takes it out of you, doesn't it? mine has lapsed over the Christmas holidays. will be back in the saddle next week. perhaps I need to salt my pile of paperwork with poems, as rewards? I only find library reminders in my heap ;)

    wishing you a peaceful, joyous and open New Year and 2015! Prim xx

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    1. Prim, I love the "golden thread" metaphor. I'll hold onto that one.

      And yes, the paperwork. I'm just back from a few days away and have to get back to it, but I'm getting somewhere. Finding poems I'd forgotten is pretty fantastic. Restaurant receipts from 1999, not so much! But I'm actually through a lot of it, and as long as I keep going, I foresee being caught up by the end of the month. Thanks for the moral support on that one. Happy new year to you, too! xo

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