The turning wheel is a moment, a circumstance, or a season that might feel chaotic or unfair.
This is a mixed media collage and a poem about staying in the center when of the turning wheel when we don’t like what’s happening, but there isn’t anything tangible we can do about it…
The Artwork: The Turning Wheel
The Poem: The Turning Wheel
Everything within me
wants to know:
The time
The place
The state
The weather
The plan
The way
I should act
to ensure nothing
ever goes up in flames
(again)
Everything within me
says it knows:
nothing will turn out
if I don’t monitor every moment
and every moment
around it…
I’m just trying to turn the wheel
around,
to click different feelings
into space,
to direct a change,
to make a right turn
into fate.
But I’m tired of all this forward & backward
tired of being jostled about
by turbo speeds & clumsy reversals
and gravity keeps pulling
all of my moments back down
to the ground.
So, finally I say:
OKAY! Okay.
And I go inward,
to the still hub of the turning wheel,
where time is not an ailment
where nothing will move me –
a place where I can be
like a bear in her cave
who knows the weather
is not against her,
It just is and it will be.
I sit and let everything
creak around me,
every moment a wave
every breath a cloud
every pulse a yes, this too.
I sit until the sun rises
inside my chest
and flowers start to grow
out of my brain.
Everything within me
sees it now:
Slowness is a gift,
like the lollygagging lift of my eyelids
every morning
like waiting for coffee
to fill the largest cup I own
bit-by-bit,
like unrushed red buds
at the end of a cold-spring maple,
a burgeoning reminder:
I am right where I need to be.
There is nothing
I should be doing
And nothing
left undone
right now,
the only thing that needs me
is this poem,
slowly unfolding.