In writing 'When the Wind Flows' I remember wanting to scare myself (and the reader) a little, regarding a life only half lived, half felt and only half grieved: written from the end perspective of our future deathbed. I wanted to scare myself because I wanted to accelerate the inevitable breakdown that occurs at the end, and bring it into my present life; I wanted to bring together the inner and outer worlds that we often meld only in those last hours and that often, in our everyday life, we use every last ounce of our energies, to keep apart. DW
Full disclosure..I make a lot of jokes about 1st born sons..cause I have loved many..brother, friends and lovers. This is a 1st Born Son poem..Like, Holy Hell..I may have to rethink think some of my ways.
Reflecting on my oldest (fbs) brother this morning..& how we managed to grow so close, before he died in 2023..Eleven years older than myself..
I had to say..look, we are not going to have a relationship if you weaponize your intellect. There was a shift..no apologies..yet a change in the atmosphere between us. And we all know change can be more powerful than apologies.
Startling. Timely. Give it Time. - when you meet yourself at your 95 y/o MIL funeral this week, i knelt to more than feeling the loss of her gifts, or to a bow of reverence at the altar when giving the 2nd reading 1Corinthians verse 13,- i bowed as an opening into the depths returning me into revelation of a coming full circle of my death ending and now what shall i do with this gift of hearing with my eyes what I am about to deliver.
It’s taken all day to dance around with my pen looking for my response to the poem until at last I came back to the tiny, immediate, spark of anger, gone so fast it was hardly even there. Perhaps because the poem is true, and also because you can’t scare the scared, even though you did, for different reasons. I don’t know, but it’s beautiful in every way.
After spending 7 weeks at my mother’s side before she died, I learned about full living, loving - words fail me here but it was profound. I returned to a heavy, stressful career, with a new perspective that “I was my mother’s daughter and that is all I needed to be” - nothing left to prove, nothing left to perform, no fear of failure. They could take my leadership or not, I finally felt I was capable of living more fully into myself, my gifts and not the demands of a corporation or others. I think it saved me in the best way. This poem is a wake-up call of the most profound kind as was the time when my mom taught me about living as she was dying. Thank you David 💙
Wow, this kind of shakes me... rattles me awake in a disturbing way. Makes me appreciate the way the remaining green leaves tussle in a breeze and how the Scrub Jay outside my window is looking at me like, "Why are you still sitting inside your box?"
In writing 'When the Wind Flows' I remember wanting to scare myself (and the reader) a little, regarding a life only half lived, half felt and only half grieved: written from the end perspective of our future deathbed. I wanted to scare myself because I wanted to accelerate the inevitable breakdown that occurs at the end, and bring it into my present life; I wanted to bring together the inner and outer worlds that we often meld only in those last hours and that often, in our everyday life, we use every last ounce of our energies, to keep apart. DW
The life and truths that we become so programmed to bury, but in that avoidance, they still never disappear.
Thank you 🫶
David, this is piercing and a beautifully alluring reframing, nudging for us to reconsider how we live.
Full disclosure..I make a lot of jokes about 1st born sons..cause I have loved many..brother, friends and lovers. This is a 1st Born Son poem..Like, Holy Hell..I may have to rethink think some of my ways.
Reflecting on my oldest (fbs) brother this morning..& how we managed to grow so close, before he died in 2023..Eleven years older than myself..
I had to say..look, we are not going to have a relationship if you weaponize your intellect. There was a shift..no apologies..yet a change in the atmosphere between us. And we all know change can be more powerful than apologies.
Startling. Timely. Give it Time. - when you meet yourself at your 95 y/o MIL funeral this week, i knelt to more than feeling the loss of her gifts, or to a bow of reverence at the altar when giving the 2nd reading 1Corinthians verse 13,- i bowed as an opening into the depths returning me into revelation of a coming full circle of my death ending and now what shall i do with this gift of hearing with my eyes what I am about to deliver.
It’s taken all day to dance around with my pen looking for my response to the poem until at last I came back to the tiny, immediate, spark of anger, gone so fast it was hardly even there. Perhaps because the poem is true, and also because you can’t scare the scared, even though you did, for different reasons. I don’t know, but it’s beautiful in every way.
This:
hell
you realize, resembles more
an average life,
half hidden,
never fully spoken,
something you can grow used to.
Your scare had impact here, David! Gratitude to you always for being a voice of wisdom.
Thank you, David....perhaps the hell of quiet desperation.
After spending 7 weeks at my mother’s side before she died, I learned about full living, loving - words fail me here but it was profound. I returned to a heavy, stressful career, with a new perspective that “I was my mother’s daughter and that is all I needed to be” - nothing left to prove, nothing left to perform, no fear of failure. They could take my leadership or not, I finally felt I was capable of living more fully into myself, my gifts and not the demands of a corporation or others. I think it saved me in the best way. This poem is a wake-up call of the most profound kind as was the time when my mom taught me about living as she was dying. Thank you David 💙
Wow, this kind of shakes me... rattles me awake in a disturbing way. Makes me appreciate the way the remaining green leaves tussle in a breeze and how the Scrub Jay outside my window is looking at me like, "Why are you still sitting inside your box?"