10 Poems to Calm and Reassure
When times are uncertain, whether in our own life, in our community, or in the wider world, poetry can be a solace. It can centre, ground and return us to the present moment. Here I offer you ten of my poems that offer calm and reassurance.
1.
CHANGE
Change comes, sometimes, like a slow dawn.
You shower, dress, and
make your way downstairs
to find the day has kicked off its boots,
let itself in and put the kettle on.
After all those sleepless nights,
there sits change, waiting for you.
2.
FOUND
You don’t need to mine,
you don’t need to tunnel for
or root out anything.
Your vast soul,
that seabed on which
the ocean of you rests,
holds every part of you,
holds you like coral to a reef.
Holding you and holding time,
releasing filaments,
strands of memory,
laced treasure
to rise and float,
to make its way to the shore
of your attention,
to be happened upon
when the time is right,
picked up, carried home,
set on the sill and wondered over.
Everything you find
found you.
3.
LIGHTHOUSE
That something
you feel called to,
the almost-voice you hear,
the thing to be done
you cannot name,
known, but since forgotten?
It’s smaller than you think, that thing,
simpler than you’d dare believe,
less and altogether more
than you can imagine—
line your life up with who you are.
Go home and light your light.
The something you search for
is no more than this,
and will make your life
no less than a lighthouse.
4.
Repair
So it comes away in layers,
flakes and falls like bark.
Not the single slice you hoped for,
not that clean cut you wanted
which, anyway,
is another kind of violence.
It is a sloughing, natural,
a steady easy shed of
things let go.
The wind will shift some, lift
the light unwanted,
and the ground will shake some down
but mostly it’s returning.
It is the coming back that does it,
time and again to the foot of the tree,
to watch its song, to witness the fall
to feel the sap rise in spring.
5.
HELD
It is the time of
young spiders flying,
invisible threads,
late autumn breezes
and many other things
we cannot know.
It is always the time of
something, maybe not blooming
or harvest, or the gentle fall
of things now spent,
but something is happening,
and something holds you
on invisible thread.
6.
TO BE
To be done with becoming
and simply be,
let go of who you are not
and were never.
Let go the hand of the known,
and of not-knowing,
let go the hand that has held you.
See it palm up and open,
present and ever-loving,
inviting you now
to know what you know
to go where you’ll go
to be who you know you are.
7.
RELIEF
In the end
the moment of change
is imperceptible.
Less the arrival of light,
more a lessening of the dark—
the hand that stops the closing door,
a curtain left open an inch,
a small draught that lets your flame
fan, catch and kindle.
The smallest of windows
can lever a life wide open.
8.
HOMECOMING
After a long time unmoored,
living alongside rather than in
your self,
on seeing this
and feeling suddenly homesick
for something you didn’t know existed—
peace
—you might long to rush at yourself,
dive headlong into the safety of home
and wonder why you keep missing,
wonder
why you and your life
keep floating away from each other.
Knowing that the anchor
was thrown too far from the boat
all that time ago
reunion can’t come soon enough.
Still, it takes time to reacquaint,
time to trust the tide
that was always trying to take you home,
and that will pick you up
and return you yet.
9.
THIS WAY, COME
A curtain billows
letting in a draught of fresh air,
inviting a glimpse of what lies outside.
There is no singular view of anything,
no one way to get things done,
no right way to live a life.
But at times your life might show itself
arriving in the dancing sunlight,
landing with a soft stirring of air.
10.
STILL
Stay a while, still.
Less like the wind,
more like the ground you stand on.
Where are you going anyway?
and what for? and must you?
This world that we live in moves
only as needed—
toward nourishment
toward light
toward life.
Save yourself for things that matter.
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10 Poems to Make You Feel Stronger and 5 Poems to Take Walking
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