What does one say about such a week? Our world witnessed another round of tragedy. As I reflect on this my mind is spinning. Was it just one horrible event this week or were there others? Or was it last week? 

The weeks have started to run together. We barely have time to recover, or to make sense of it, before another wave of sorrow swallows us, slamming us relentlessly into the crumbled shards of normal we once took for granted.

It is hard to catch one’s breath in times like this. How important it is to breathe! I forget to sometimes. And yet I know that breathing, consciously, deliberately, is the only thing that saves me. Breathing quiets my spinning head and centers me in the moment flooding me with calm, with peace. Mindfulness does not mean noticing the chaos around me. Mindfulness means focusing my attention on the moment at hand…on simply breathing. Slow breath in….hold …slow breath out.

No matter what the next week brings, I only need to remember to breathe…

Shi Sai Sunday’s Week in ReVerse – 17 July 2016

If only they believed
Sun light and moon beams
A storm
relentless, inescapable
it was every soul for themselves
growing befuddled
those silly quirks you hated
Only time will tell
Yep, the joke’ll be on them
How do you live with something like that?
I fear we’re all mad!
We Weep For France.
Winter was her favorite time of year.
Behold the Wild Rose
Life can’t be contained
In truth, he had grown accustomed to the weeds.

~ kat

The Shi Sai, (formerly known as a ReVerse) is a form created by Kat Myrman in April 2016. It is a poem created by taking one line of verse from several poems of an author’s own collection. The shi sai is done as a review of a series or collection of poems and therefore, each line should flow in chronological order of the dates the poems were written (from oldest to new). The lines chosen should be the author’s favorite from each poem. This form works best if the author resists the temptation to read the full new poem before all the verses have been added. (It helps one to resist the impulse to change a line to make it “fit”.