In a Fallow Season

 

We need the leaves to blanket us

We need our blankets to crumble into us

We need our roots to work the soil's stiffness

Hollow.

We need the wind to rake us 

We need our limbs to grow bare

We need the bareness to reveal, not barrenness,

But growth.

We need a fallow season

We need a deep sleep to plant dreams in 

We need our long dreams to coil the starlight's

Rough rope.

We need the rope for swings

We need to swing on thin limbs and leaves

We need to sieve the daylight for water, light,

And hope.

 

I was thinking, this morning, that we...that I...needed a day that wasn't a holiday celebration, but rather a holiday remembrance. That there should be a day, in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, to let the sorrows of the year live for a time and then be--in so far as possible--left to rest. I think that with all the coverage of the monolith in the desert, I have been thinking about the need for space that isn't already inscribed with meaning to catch the small and large losses and missteps and regrets of the year gone by. And that could just be 2020. It could just be the exhaustion of year of broken sleep and long stretches of isolation. This is a year of altars. 

-- Chrissa