It's time to shake off 2018 (and 2017 ... and 2016 ... umm, let's face it, it hasn't been the best run here for a couple of years now) and regenerate, much as a Time Lord does every now and then. Things change; they should, they must.
I put the internet on a much-needed snooze for the last couple of months, but I'm back. Taking my waking slow, but I'm here. And I'm hopeful about 2019.
Shall we kick the new year off with a Pulitzer Prize winner? Yes, let's. Can anyone nail a villanelle quite like Roethke? I think not. This is one of my favorites.
The Waking
by Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
(Read the rest here, at Poets.org.)
And let's compare favorite lines, shall we? (I know, I know ... an impossible task. Let's try anyway.)
I learn by going where I have to go.
I'm gonna have to go with this one. As a matter of fact, I might adopt this as the quote for my year. The quote for my life.
I learn by going where I have to go.
I don't always want to go where I have to go. ("Can't I go somewhere else, please?" I often ask or whine.) But I learn by going, I go by learning, and I have to, I have to, I have to, no matter how much I want to go somewhere else. (This shaking keeps me steady. I should know ... Oh, Roethke, stop throwing competing lines my way. I can choose only one.)
Anyway, yes, it's been a difficult couple of years. (What falls away is always. And is near ... Oh, c'mon, stop it, Roethke, I'm choosing only one favorite line!) But I sense that I'll learn by going, as I have to go, into 2019. And the shimmering hope that is a new, uncharted, unlived twelve-months-to-come is whispering to me that sometime in the coming year, I will "I hear my being dance from ear to ear." (Oh, that's a great line, too. But no, I'm not changing my answer.)
I learn by going where I have to go.
I'm looking forward to finding out where I have to go this year.
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The Poetry Friday round up is at Poetry for Children.
