Reclamation Artist

June 27

RECLAMATION ARTIST

I stand over the refuse can and peer in; I drive slowly past the piles of curbside discards.  I have so much trouble accepting there is no reclaiming most of this ever-growing mass.  There must be an alternate plan but I can’t see it yet.  I surround myself with hopeful stacks and wishful trinkets.  I want to make a new world from the old, save past relationships and make them somehow fresh.  I don’t want to drown.  I fear I can’t think fast enough to keep the wave from breaking over us all.  I will maintain an open mind and be grateful my life was retrieved from the dustbin.  I’ll steal peeks at what has been put out for lost.  I was once lost, too.

Read your favorite book one page a day.

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When I rise up and when I lay down

In order to be happy with you

I have to learn to be happy without you.

I gasp at the pain of it

I desperately wish that the above statement were not true,

but alas, you are gone in a way that I can never reclaim you

and to hold on to what of you is still tentatively available

I must release my frightened grasp.

A wisp of smoke is not the bonfire of our past,

but it is what remains and I breathe it in as best I can.

Immediately I realize I am holding on again.

I breathe you out, let you go.

I want to run screaming throwing you from my bonds,

yet another of my attempts at control.

So, now it’s time to pray.

Not a prayer to get my way, not a prayer to make you stay,

not a prayer to make you gone, just a prayer to live on my own.

God help me please to live my life,

Please guide me away from strife.

I am lost and cannot find my way,

Father, hold me till the light of day.