Good morning! It’s a busy day around here and in honor of my reader’s limited time as well, today’s VerseDay is short and sweet. (I’d say ‘like me’ but we all know I’m of average height and more bitter than sweet.) Enjoy my first haiku in a long while.
Caught
In tepid stillness
Dark thoughts seize hold of my mind.
So I keep moving.
Hey, ya’ll. If you know me, you know that I’m a runner. Sometimes more of a hobbled, panting jogger. Occasionally a hitch-in-her-giddyap mosey-er. Currently I’ve worked up to the ‘two-a-day’ portion of my training schedule for the 2018 Wild West Relay
Basically, this tortuous routine requires two runs within a ten-hour period. They say it will help the body learn how to run on tired legs and get over the mental barriers associated with that. I say, gushing sweat on a 98-degree afternoon, beet red, and looking like I just stroked out, that mental barriers are only half the issue.
I’ve been participating in relay races for the last 4 or 5 years and have captained the team for two of those. It’s one of those stupid, addictive things that once you agree to do it, you hate yourself.
From the nerves that strike even before you start, all the way until the last section of your race when your legs are throbbing and you’re sleep-deprived-drunk and everything and nothing is funny, and you’re pretty sure between the altitude, miles, and meals made of gels and power bars you might be hallucinating that there’s a raccoon pointing you in the direction of the next exchange…where was I? Oh yes.
You hate it.
You f#&king hate it! And why in the hell did I sign up for this goddamn thing again!?
Except there’s this sweaty group of misfits that welcomes you back into the van and gives you the roomiest seat after your leg, and feeds you bananas and homemade pasta salad and nods as you commiserate over all the shoulda’s you encountered over the miles.
Except there’s a group of total strangers that cheer you on as you come across every exchange, smiling, and clapping and honestly glad that you made it there…because runners (almost every single one I know) know what you go through on those miles and what it feels like when you feel like you can’t go another step. And they slap your shoulders and congratulate you and it gets to that you are disappointed when you walk into the grocery store and aren’t met by a group of moms cheering you on.
“Atta Girl! You made it and you’re dressed! Look at that, choosing fruit over cookies for the kids! You rock! You got this momma!”
Wouldn’t that be nice? We should start doing that…
Except that you stick around at the exchange to cheer on those tired, aching souls that are pushing themselves beyond boundaries and comfort zones. Those runners, those humans, striking out against every thought that tells them they can’t. That they shouldn’t, and getting to look them in the eye, smile and cheer and say, “You did! And you should! And you will!”
Except the stars. The countless masses, splashed over the night sky coming out of the expansive heaven of Wyoming plains and into the hills of Colorado, painted above you and reminding you of how small you are. And yet how beautiful an existence, to stand in awe while recognizing your own insignificance.
Except the cold beer at the finish. And the sleep you get in a real bed the first night after. And the way you have to Lamaze breath just to lower yourself onto the toilet for the next couple of days. And the medal hanging in the closet, and the smile that lasts for a good two weeks after…
So what can this insane process teach us about writing?
That it’s not all easy.
That it’s turbulent and painful. Merely signing up for it can cause panic, and self-doubt, and the desire to quit. That training for it, sacrificing other areas of our life to devote time to it, doing the hard editing, admitting to our faults in order to change them, and opening up dozens of rejection letters are the painful “two-a-days” that build our mental stamina for the road ahead.
That there are people, in your own circle, waiting back at the table for you with open arms (and maybe bananas, I don’t know… I’m not in your circle) able and ready to listen to your trials.
That there are people, not even in your immediate circle who are cheering you on to the finish line. Because, like many runners, writers know what it feels like to drudge through the pages, to cut out the organs of your favorite story, the elation of inspiration and the crushing self-doubt of the whole process.
That there will be an end product, and perfect or not, it will be yours. And that’s something, insignificant human speck. It’s something to have your voice put into pages.
If you’re a runner of any level and have considered a relay; Do it.
If you’re a want-to-be writer who hasn’t committed to it; DO IT.
Because the work is hard, and its dirty and painful…but the work is where you find the deeper level of strength that you haven’t met yet. Where feet hit the road and pens kiss paper, that’s where you discover yourself.
Get out there and do it.
Good morning!
Here’s a little poetic sidetrack for your day.
Remember to send me your stuff and I’ll enter it into the running for The Beautiful Stuff’s poetry anthology due out Fall of 2019.
Not Ours
Count you now,
The minutes and hours of indiscretion against civility.
The innumerable times the heart wandered far into the woods
Captivated by the sounds and sights
Of a universe untouched
Count the ways
You failed to be the raging commercial machine
Felling the bounty of a sphere so generous
Count the ways you threw off the endless hunger
And returned to the beast that made you
The first beast, the wild.
Count it down
The moments we have left her
She fades against the nuclear brilliance of human greed.
Soon to be lost
Only remembered in poems and pictures
Of vagabond souls who understood their own hearts
Count you the ways we miscarried
Crowned champions of the self-destructive species award
Annihilating our gifts as toddlers in a tantrum
Always wanting more
Always seeking to control, to own
That
Which
Is
Not Ours.
It sickens the heart
It drops guilted weight onto the body and cannot be shed
The wrecked and torn pieces left those to come.
Count the beauty lost
The moments yet found
Ephemeral and far between
Fill your heart with them
Spur the fight.
Remember, you upright beast
Rabid and teeth-bearing
Mere genes shy from clamoring in trees
Defend your home.
Despite the urge to limerick you with inappropriate words that rhyme with Enis, I’ll attempt to reach for something more high brow… Enjoy!
The Heart
I spring up from the heart of a wooded path.
The smell of pine needles breaking down, and the crackle of acrid leaves
Feed my roots
The heat rising from Earth, through dirt and granite.
The brush of seeded grasses,
Passing along their generations to my body as I stride on.
The scratch of bark,
The quiet bending of grass
The warning cry of finch and chickadee,
Telling me in no uncertain terms
That I don’t belong.
Hello friend.
Listen, I feel like we’ve known each other a good while now. I feel like I’ve showed you some pretty vulnerable and tender under-belly stuff here in the last few months so we’re working with a good soul-rapport. Therefore, I feel comfortable spilling the beans.
This is not a new blog.
I was pounding my head against keys last night in the midst of a very stressful and busy week, wondering what I could possibly come up with that was meaningful and timely. I began looking through my old blog posts from the NCW Writing Bug days (still a FANTASTIC blog, go and check it out if you can; The Writing Bug) and found this one. Though years have passed, it was serendipitous to see myself immersed in the same turbulent cycle of stress and not writing, so I’m sharing it again for all of those out there who are suffering in kind as a gentle reminder:
Find your joy. Life’s too short and miserable to live without it.
“I haven’t been writing.
There. I said it.
I thought I’d give it up for a little while, because, hey, life is busy right now and I have things that NEED to be done.
Writing is a luxury. It feels selfish and languid to sit in front of my computer and write, especially with such little measurable profit for my effort. It feels greedy. I mean, how can writing be more important than getting through the never-ending pile of laundry or the constant but unnoticeable job of keeping the house from tanking into disarray? How can it possibly be as necessary as feeding the kids or taking the dogs to the vet? The living things must take priority after all.
I haven’t been writing. I’ve been cleaning out closets and cutting back the dead and brittle death of winter in my garden. I’ve been carting the kids to school and extra-curricular activities and logging countless, mind-numbing miles in the process of training for a marathon (which, have I mentioned? I’m so over the joy of running).
I’ve been planning and executing birthday parties (which I wish meant that I actually got to execute the idea of gift baggies filled with tiny, un-organizable stuff). I’ve been replacing broken crowns and Craiglisting the contents of my crawlspace. But I haven’t been writing.
The result: It’s been one of the most stressful, anxiety-ridden months of my life. I can’t ever seem to catch up on anything, and when I do it falls back into needing done. There’s no progress. I’m as irritable and surly as a hamster stuck on a wheel, running but not moving. I have no patience and no joy. In short I’ve become a jerk.
And I can’t help but wonder if the lack of doing something, just one thing, that I love is letting the dark and ugly side of me run rampant.
Somewhere in the scramble to be an independent adult I sacrificed the idea that my own joy was a worthwhile venture.
When did following our happiness become something selfish?
I’m putting “WRITE” on the top of my list today, and I’m not doing anything else until I’ve given time to my own happiness. It will pay more than money. It will pay in fulfillment and give meaning and beauty in a world of laundry piles and dentist appointments.
What brings you joy in life? Have you invested in your joy today?”
For the last few weeks I’ve been listening to the “Hamilton” soundtrack, catering to my daughters’ obsession of the rhythmic and addictive lyrics. I realize there’s some language in it that many would deem inappropriate for kids. But being a lover of all language and knowing my kids’ ability to differentiate between words used for flavoring and appropriate alternatives for mixed company, I don’t shy away from it. Because more important than a few f-bombs is the fact that they love it, and by loving it are learning from it.
I love it too. I love that this amazing man (hats off to you, Lin-Manuel Miranda), took an overlooked story and breathed life and passion into for a new generation with quick-witted writing that tied the past with present day issues. Suddenly, not just my family but our nation as well, is interested in history and the grit it took for our country to break free of tyranny.
I have to look up the answers to questions my littles bring up and I love that they are making me revisit it, because we should all strive to remember our past. When we don’t, we stop being on guard for the behaviors and situations that can lead to tragic ends in our own country.
I don’t make political posts, in general. Tempers flare quickly and civil discourse takes too much compassion and introspective thought for most people. However, we are living with a surreal administration and I think we can all agree that when one person in power disenfranchises entire groups based on their gender, race, religion or economic status, it sets us back as the nation built on the idea that all humans are created equal.
Larger scale problems deserve attention, but for this post let’s think about independence on a smaller scale.
On this day, I want you to consider what it means to you to be independent.
Independent in thought; independent in pursuing your true self. Conversely, think about how dependent you are.
What makes you dependent? What ties you down, what chains you? Is it your past? Is it your job, your partner, or your family? Is it your fear?
What keeps you from being your best self? What keeps you from following your passion? How can you, today, on this Independence Day, free yourself?
Revolutions rarely take a day. They are years in the making, with sacrifices of blood and lives. Revolutions are not free. There is a cost to rise up against the powers that seek to tie us and use our one precious lifetime for their own gain.
So today, I could tell you to sit back, relax, enjoy the barbecues and hot dogs, slather your standard American body down with potato salad and jump into a kiddie pool filled with Bud Light while waving sparklers from every available appendage…but I won’t.
Today I’m going to tell you to remember the past, remember the fight. Remember there are things worth standing up for and things won’t change unless you rise up and change them. One person’s anarchy is another’s revolution.
Free yourself from the fear, trepidation, and self-doubt that keeps you from the things you want. Free yourself from the ideas and practices that hold you back.
Rise up.
Don’t throw away your shot.
Be young, scrappy, and hungry.
Take back your life, your country, and the principles that sparked revolution and won freedom to pursue happiness.
Today is Verseday!
I’m still accepting submissions to be posted and considered for the anthology due out Fall of 2019, so send me your good stuff, your hard stuff…your beautiful stuff.
Here’s your verse of the day. Enjoy!
Stupid Heart
Beacon in the night, the safety of arms I know around me.
You are the dark expanse to my nebulous cloud.
What primordial gene, residual trait,
Makes my heart blindly ache?
Succumb so wholly to the stardust swirling
Catching me in its current.
This animal heart roams ever closer to yours.
I love you in gnashing ways, unbreakable
Unrequited.
A worsening disease; malignant and wild,
You are the celestial mess embedded in me.
The something deep in cells and will not be ignored.
I want to climb you like an oak and shake your leaves,
Nest in your branches. Feel the wind whipping ’round,
While I hover in your safety.
I want to touch my thoughts to yours
Have you understand how you upend me.
The ways you break me. The need filling its home where the lowest point is.
Where it’s meant to be.
Like water in a gully.
My heart, a nightingale, shooting across the darkening dawn,
Pounding breast with no purpose but to take to your air.
It cannot be explained or dissected.
It just is.
It does
What.
Love.
Does.
Aimless and reckless.
A butterfly tottering into the arms of a hurricane.
Beating paper wings against walls of wind and rock
Orange dust scattered across concrete,
Rendering itself useless through stubborn insistence that,
There’s something about you…
Given no instructions and taking no advice,
It flutters into the burning embers of you,
Happily meeting the char of death.
Stupid Love.
Not everything free is worth the taking and there’s much truth to the adage that nothing is ever, truly free. But occasionally, in life, we land a jackpot. Its all about in our perspective.
I bring up this subject for selfish reasons that will be discussed later on, but for now, I want to talk about appreciation of free stuff.
What kind of free stuff?
The samples at Costco? The swag bags at your local 5K races? The couch sitting on your neighbor’s lawn for four days with a sad cardboard sign begging someone with a large truck and a strong back to take it home? (Sorry, by the way, Harvest neighbors…you’ll be happy to know the large brown beast is gone).
Sure those things are “free”. Somewhat.
I mean, you pay for your Costco membership, you pay for your race fee. You pay with a minor rotator cuff tear from hoisting a giant sectional onto the roof of an Elantra. In some way, we always pay.
We pay with our time. We pay with resources or trades of our services. We do favors and scratch backs. But what’s really free? It deserves a moment to slow down and think about it.
Take a deep, slow breath.
Notice that? The air. Free of charge, yet something we take for granted. Take a moment to notice the summer finery around you. Hear the birdsong, allow yourself to be mesmerized by the sunrise lifting over clouds. The laughter of babies, the hug from your child, the cuddle of a furry friend. (I hesitate to expunge on the ‘free’ affection between adults as, sadly, a price is sometimes attached.) A smile from a stranger passing on the street. Someone opening a door for you. Even better–you helping someone else with no expectation for reciprocation.
Here’s the main point I’m making…Free doesn’t always mean cheap. Free doesn’t always mean worthless. We can give freely our hearts, our compassion, our empathy, our decency and respect for our fellow humans.
Kindness doesn’t cost a thing.
So today, think about what you have in your life, the little and big, that you get for free. The 86,400 seconds in every day you are gifted with, your dog’s love (minus the cost of a beggin strip or six), the beauty of the natural world, daydreams, sunshine, and most importantly, your human capacity to love others.
With all this talk of free stuff, here’s the shameless plug:
Today only, my novels will be available, FREE, for download from Amazon. If you’re looking for something to enjoy in your summer hours, please check them out and let others know.
Enjoy your day, and breathe a little free into everything you do.
Hey Darlin’. Listen, I know this is a little late in the posting, but I was spending an amazing afternoon with my kiddos touring Fort Collins’ awesome Museum of Discovery and spending upwards of three hours testing out every. single. musical and weather related experiment. It was a rare moment of beauty when I could drop being the “serious parent” and play. I hope you can find this in your life too.
Today is an oldie but a goodie. I’ve hung on to this one, revamped it, tweaked it, poured over it and abandoned it in a thousand ways, so I’m submitting it to ya’ll with a grain of salt and the caveat that I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.
Partly inspired by that amazing song of Paul Simon’s “Train in the Distance”, partly from the muse of young love (like I said, this one’s been around a long while because we all know, I ain’t no spring chicken.)
Enjoy.
Letting Go
Hard is the moment when your heart loses hold,
Throws you down the last stair you didn’t see.
Shakes your body, breath-catching, squawk of fear.
The impending release, a train in the distance.
Hear the canyon-rolled moan, feel the grumble,
Shaking through the bottoms of your feet.
When you thought there was time.
Time to roll the memories over your tongue.
The smell of his shirt,
the fleshy warmth of his bottom lip between your teeth.
The particular scrape of stubble against your neck.
Time to hold your lonely gravity against his charming heart
Time to hope for a chance
that his soul might settle into yours
Like some god made him just for you.
The key to your dreams.
But that damn train…
Howling as it knife-edges closer.
Until, predetermined on its track, it rolls in
and the horror hits you.
They have to go.
And trying to hold them is like holding on to madness
Except, you’ve already stitched him there,
With that unreasonable spark hope. Incredible notions of destiny.
The train pulls away; tugs at delicate threads,
Unevenly, where your heart has grown around the stitches.
(Like the stitch of crows feet around laughing eyes.
The stitch of a stolen kiss while he watched you sleep)
And you ache from the pull. but you can’t stop the train.
And when it’s billowing stacks are all you see,
When its mournful bawl is all that’s left your ears,
you look down.
To all that remains… a gaping, bloody mess.
Shredded tissue, dripping a fever
Soaking wooden platform beneath feet.
That’s what letting go feels like;
Dripping blood, hot on your toes, shadowed by the fading
light of a train in the distance.
Welcome to the joyride, ya’ll. Today is the the first Verseday of the year and I’ve chosen a simple little thing I’ve dusted off from a few contest entries ago.
Remember to send me your poems, and/or thoughts and comments on what you’re reading here. I’m so excited to begin!
Enjoy!
I watched a robin take the sky today
Bright red breast striking blue cerulean,
a rocket cutting through air
Silent beats
Free.
That must be what it’s like to die.
Wing lifting, pounding rush.
Air swirling behind feather tip.
Untethered
Unbound
from the confines of earth and expectation
Like too-high clouds, out of reach.
A soul lifted.
Sarah Reichert Author 