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It’s gorgeous in my corner of the planet this third Sunday in September. The seasons are shifting. For some of us this means cool morning snaps and shorter days. It is a time for gathering and for reaping what we have sown. It’s a time for celebrating life’s abundance and time to prepare our hearths and homes to see us through the coming winter and longer nights.

We don’t have a choice in the goings and comings of the seasons. They cycle in and out like clockwork, never looking back, never stagnant, always moving forward.

Unlike nature humans have a choice in how we meet the seasons of our own lives. We have a choice to move past our yesterdays; to use the present moment to decide whether we will stay mired in the past or learn from it, to let go and move forward. We can even choose to go backward. Freedom of choice is what sets humanity apart from other living things. It Is exhilarating but it is also a great responsibility, a burden even, because our choices matter. Like nature, despite our illusion of independence, we are connected to each other.

Our individual capacity for goodness as well as darkness affects us all. It’s something I think about. Especially now. May we all remember we are not alone in the choices we make. I’m counting on us to move humanity forward.

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Shi Sai Sunday’s Week in ReVerse ~ 18 September 2016

Never forget
frost comes gently at dawn
feelings, reputations, spirits,
twisted, then snapped from their roots
to ensure the greatest good
clouds shape-shift by day
what will be will be
The things people collect, and the photographs that they display, often tell hidden stories that are never mentioned in polite conversation.
Oh, surely I knew
an overweening tyrant
a new ball of yarn
Plop, kerplunking, pitter, pat
you might be deplorable
fighting for my heart.

~kat

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The Shi Sai, (formerly known as a ReVerse) is a new form I came up with during Poetry Month in April 2016. I’ve actually been writing shu sai for years but was inspired to give it a prooer name. 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”.