Showing posts with label Jack and the Beanstalk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jack and the Beanstalk. Show all posts

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Future Tents

March 29

FUTURE TENTS

The future seeps in through the windows, like the dawn stealing across the sky.  Once I inhale it, I am out of doors, only the lightest of canvas covering me.  The opening flaps in the breeze.  The wind of unbidden things echoes off the walls of people shut out from this adventure.  I brace myself for the cutting current but am greeted by the softest of zephyrs.  I duck out.  I stand unfettered.  Lonely whispers call but I am isolated.  The scene is empty, serene and beautiful.  There are other tents, other seekers standing on other hills but they see their own futures from the vantage of their own tents and thankfully I am left to see mine.


Tape a coin to the place you sleep.

*
Catalog of Growth

The right seed in the right season
grows a garden of miracles for me.
I get the food for my table
or the stores for winter.

Sometimes when I’m in a Jack like predicament,
right planted seeds can provide a bean stalk
of escape from my restricted life.

I have a role to play with these wonders.
I must sort the seeds from the pebbles.
I must let the kernels out of my pocket
and into the ground.

I water when I can
and harvest what comes to fruition.
Though the best by far
is the part when I get to share the seeds.


You are reading selections from Sober on the Way to Sane and More Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

And I Believe You

March 5


AND I BELIEVE YOU

“This will be easy,” says my sponsor.
“Oh, yes.  Simplicity itself.  I’m sure,” I respond.  “I’ve participated in these plans before.”
“We get good results,” she retorts.
“I love how you pick goals, which are intellectual straight lines and emotional roller coasters.  You do it with an open face, not a modicum of guilt.”
“Why should I feel guilty?  You keep getting better; I keep staying sober.  What is there to feel bad about?”
“The guileless look on your face; I fall for it every time, but no more.  I know you’re cunning.  You know this will be hard.  I remember when we worked on honesty.  What could have been simpler?  Or hope, how sweet a concept.  After thirty rounds on the floor with setting limits, I realized you’re like the bean seller that Jack met.  You say they are magic beans and I believe you.  You say they will grow to the sky.  I know they will and I will climb them.  Just don’t tell me it will be easy.”


Write an advertisement for your best quality.
*



A Duck Trying to Teach a Fish to Swim



Just because you’ve been in the water
doesn’t mean you know how to swim.
Just because you swim in the water
doesn’t mean you can teach me how.

Floating on top and plunging your head
under the surface occasionally
doesn’t qualify you to safe guard me.

Poaching is unpleasant to those of us caught,
we that were foolish enough to believe
that birds of a feather can teach school
are picked off and swallowed
by the benevolence of so much quack.



You are reading selections from Sober on the Way to Sane and More Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault