To Be Thus Carried: A New Poem

This is what I seek through the waning days

I’ve been a little less around these parts, reckoning with a few things in my life, so I hope you’ll forgive me. Back to it!

(Pexels)

To Be Thus Carried

The cabbage, yam-purple and defiantly 
Earthy: I have rarely seen something so fully itself. 
It neither expands nor fades, outside my window. 
It exists, unambitious. Determined, through the winter. 
Royal in its being. 

This is what I seek through the waning days. 
A persistence that still finds the light. 

Others may have been given more - yes. 
A path that winds through the light. 

But there is always a way to worship. An umbrella, 
Opened slowly under the sun. Somewhere, quietly, 
People are holding the line. Little battlelines marked out
With mercy and dignity. 

We cannot all irradiate, sunflowers bolding toward the sun, 
Taking up space. But how warm the coffee cup 
with the fingers wrapped round.
How indifferent to woe the scarlet flash of the redbreast
Above the broken fountain that still holds water. 

The world asks for success. The church, for flourishing. 
The beingness of us runs deeper than the fathoms 
that try to bind. Reality a river that runs a drumbeat mysterious
with or without our paddling. But how musical the rushing of it. 

Currents that hold a rhythm, and keep it, 
despite everyone trying to stop it. 
The sun rises and falls, 
and in lines we bend our lives. It is alright, beloved, 
to understand that we exert only a little pressure on this water. 
To be carried. May these currents, remorseless 
yet warm, carry you past all the shoals where you left 
your dreams, your griefs, and 
the unexpected 
bruise. 

Here is freedom - 
to be borne forward, to eddies new - 
to be thus sweetly carried. 


love, 
Claire Adderholt 

If you liked this one, you might also enjoy Sunlit, Resist: A Long Poem on Dreams Deferred