This past week provided me with a reality check. It was a gray meteorologically, but an astute observer might also have sensed a tinge of internal grayness in my writing as well.

As weeks go it wasn’t extraordinary, but it wasn’t a total wash either. I managed to eke out a respectable collection of poems. I received a decent annual review from my boss, a tiny bump in salary, coined a new poetry form, mastered a new recipe, and found out that my next grandchild, due this summer, is a girl.

But it was overcast and stormy all week which cast a cloud on everything. How easily swayed I am by external things that don’t matter. It’s not like the bad weather affected me so much that I wanted to find a dark hole to curl up in. But I allowed what should have been a fairly good week to be cast in shades of gray. And I really had no reason to feel blue. It was actually a good week!

Well the universe wasn’t having it. If I was determined to be blue then I should at least have a good reason for my sour mood. On Friday my partner was let go from work. OMG! WTF! Really?!

Never underestimate the power of a real downer to snap you into the reality. When I was younger, this sort of news would have sent me into a panic, but with age and experience come wisdom. After getting past the initial shock, I took a deep breath and examined the situation. Suddenly the gray skies didn’t matter. Those good things I listed above came flooding into view. Bad news was tempered with good and I settled into the moment with the assurance that everything would be okay because I could recall similar challenges that turned out okay.

In that moment I realized how much I have evolved over time. I listened to my slow steady breathing. There is a line in the middle of this week’s reverse: “wasted hours can’t be seized”. True enough. But wasted implies past tense. Those hours are over and done. What I can seize is this moment. And in this moment, I’m okay…better than okay in fact. And I am determined that wasted hours spent worrying about the past, or dreading the future will not seize me. Right now, in the midst of gray-skies and challenges on the horizon, I am counting my blessings.

Sunday’s Week in ReVerse – 11 March 2018

all this fuss over tweets
no clouds in sight, just blue
how my soul longs
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
grey clouds descend again
reminding us of ourselves
wasted hours can’t be seized
snow flurried, spring’s first blush
that reeked of deception
dandy shoots dot the lawn,
but demonyms fall short as they should
feathered shadow in flight
a whisper in the stillness…
we always long for more
faint of heart
it rustles and murmurs
when clouds block the view

~kat

A ReVerse poem is a summary poem with a single line lifted from each entry of a collection of work over a particular timeframe and re-penned in chronological order as a new poem. Unlike a collaborative poem, the ReVerse features the words of one writer, providing a glimpse into their thoughts over time. I use it as a review of the previous week.