No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to flee and fly high...(Jesse Jackson)

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

—William Stafford


I want to thank William Stafford for writing this. I love it when I find a poem that gathers together my stray thoughts and places them all on a neat page. The paradox of my nature - a lover of chaos and freedom, and a fond admirer of the contained. There you have it. The poetic paradox. I try to write of freedom, but I seek to contain it within the poem. Somewhere in the desire to control the shape, space, silence, word within the poem, I am finding ways of setting free the spirit contained. Hmmmm...now that has just taken me somewhere else.

Sorry.

My head has been fevered for a long time now, and I have spent a lot of the last 6 weeks in bed, asleep, dreaming, or awake with a migraine. Literally, my head has been on fire. It has felt as though there was simply too much happening in there. Or there had been too much pouring in, and not enough outlet. Just a maelstrom of words and thoughts, emotions, images, dreams, fears, intuitions whooshing around. That or a case of something knocking but can't get in...

I always figure these things happen because they need to. And now, as I start to stir into the year, and the headache begins to release its grip, I find I am still holding the thread, the same thread I have held through my whole life, despite my losses and griefs over recent years. Sometimes I didn't realise I was still holding it. But I was, and now I am opening up to new and unknown possibilities, following that intuition, that thread of love.

I'll keep you posted as to where it leads!

For now, I just wanted to say hello, to wish everyone is Blissfool 2007 and to share with you the poem. Never let go of the thread. Dare to dream.