photo by Brad Peacock
Dear friends,
If you're anything like me, you are often battling the inner chorus of not enough, those feelings of insufficiency that can easily unravel our mental health. But I notice that when I'm immersed in some task or absorbed in my own joy, the voice quiets down, and there is so much less doubt about what I'm doing right or wrong. When do you notice that voice quieting for you? How can you stay immersed and say this is enough at a time when the world seems a difficult and fearful place?
This Is Enough
I don’t always know how to quiet
the voice in my mind that cries,
Not enough, not enough, the same
refrain since the day I first learned
to string together a chain of words.
But when I am watering the orchids,
and the cedar chips release their
loamy scent like a sigh of relief,
some wiser self inside me says,
This is enough—filling up the pitcher
then pouring water over the leaves
and aerial roots that turn greener
with my sudden attention. Enough
the bare branches of witch hazel
sending out red and yellow pompoms
of blossoms before the equinox,
enough the clock’s slow drip of
hours spent alone, and then seeing
my husband’s face after days apart,
smiling beside our car because he too
has been waiting for this moment,
gravel snapping beneath our boot soles
as we walk toward each other again.
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Ways to Gather:
I'm also including here many ways to gather with me and dear friends, including several free opportunities online during poetry month.
The Medicine of Poetry: A Reading with James Crews, Zeina Azzam, Melinda Burns, Carolyn Chilton Casas, and Cristina M.R. Norcross on Wednesday April 16th at 7pm ET/4pm PT. FREE via Zoom, recorded:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1298215731199?aff=oddtdtcreator
Love & Verse for Now: A Reading & Conversation with James Crews & Jacqueline Suskin, offering a sneak peek at my latest anthology, Love Is for All of Us, on Wednesday, April 23rd at 7pm ET/4pm PT, FREE via Zoom, recorded:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1298213303939?aff=oddtdtcreator
Grateful Anyway: One-day In-person Retreat at Meadow Park Building in San Luis Obispo, CA with James Crews & Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, $200:
https://www.jamescrews.net/news/z735x25roc0sz1n3dp5jac4sxul5pa
Oh, Broken-Open Heart: A Mother's Day Poetry Gathering for Mourners with James Crews & Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, $0-30 sliding scale, via Zoom, recorded:
https://letsreimagine.org/76768/oh-broken-open-heart-a-mothers-day-poetry-gathering-for-mourners
This, enough, James says,
prompting us to find our own.
Immersion quiets.
i echo the discouragement of a nagging not enoughness. i also know the stinging self-judgment from too muchness, particularly as a man raised in the western world. we’re taught not to feel too much, not to cry too much, not to care too much. but i do feel, i do cry, and i do care. and for me that rebellious victory is enough. i love the reunion with your husband at the end of the poem. one of the brightest parts of my day is a reunion with my own husband when our hearts each wondrously whisper, “welcome home”