[poem] Beginning

[kaberett]

I expect this to undergo further drastic revision; nonetheless, it's for the lioness-oracle who knocked it free.

Step one: remove hand from the flame.
Don't grasp the nettle firmly.
There is no need to search out pain:
there will be always, waiting
in the wings, life-changing catastrophe --
o hurricane-spun far-flung butterfly.

Instead, seek ease -- seek joy.
You are allowed to change your mind.
You are allowed, when all seems hard & cruel,
to coiling curl on inwards; to ask for room to breathe;
to set aside complexity for just so large a space of time
as gives your ledge the breadth to find your feet.

Remember, when the earthquake peddler calls:
the soil that soft and silent lies beneath you
through nettles and through crystal-chrysalis
brings forth peacocks. Simplicity
is always present, too. Remember
that the peddler means no harm, that change
contains the seeds of growth, that
in the end, foundations weather all.

Comments

[raze]

Oh! Such beautiful, effective imagery here. Very well done. <3

[kaberett]

Thank youuuuu <3 It has been tweaked a bit since you left this comment, if you are interested; and the pendant I reference is this one. :-)

[birke]

I like it.

[kaberett]

Thank you for saying :-)

[macey]

What I particularly like here is your word-feel; you're very good at placing sounds just so, to echo each other - 'will always be / life-changing catastrophe' - and also balancing the weight of syllables into a rhythm - 'coiling curl on inwards', even slipping towards iambic pentameter in 'You are allowed, when all seems hard & cruel' & 'Simplicity is always present, too. / Remember that the peddler means no harm // that in the end, foundations weather all.'

[azurelunatic]

The nettle. :D

[elisem]

So very yes.

[elisem]

May I please add a link with this post to the page I am building about blog-and-journal pieces of writing and the shinies that are associated with them? (Partly it's so people can see things other people have done, and a lot it's so that when I have a hard day I can browse through it and remember that I am living in a community where people interconnect with art and do meaningful things with it and that there is good yet to come. Um, that sounds very mopey, but the thing is true.)

[kaberett]

Yes, please do <3 It has tweaks that want making - I have not brought anything like as much as I want the bit about how predicting earthquakes is not something we can do, and not something we have any expectation of doing, and they will always be a surprise (on human timescales), but if we build our foundations solidly enough we can survive without breaking a single bottle. (And about how landscapes are rearranged, and about how "foundations" are both building & in the sense of the world more wholly, and. And and and.)

I am so, so glad you like.