Walking straight into light

Walking straight into light

feels oddly like
walking blind.

Still the hill beckons me
up. Over its lip, 
the rising sun. 

I have chosen this course
with care, my
limbs sailing the 
warmest trail.

I still can’t see
two steps ahead.

Photo by Jordan Wozniak on Unsplash

The Prompt

I’m going to keep this shortish and sweetish, friends, because I finally got my car back yesterday and am about to load up and head for home. The last few weeks have felt filled with uncertainty for me. My life always contains a fair bit of uncertainty, but the combo of global events, the presidential election, my vehicular drama, and the stage I’m at with various projects has amplified my awareness of this. Yesterday, I announced aloud that my new plan was to stop planning, and then I was shocked by a phone call telling me that after the three attempts at engine replacement and billion related snafus, my car repair was finished (well ahead of the most recent projections I’d been given). Uncertainty is ever-present, but of course, I am not always present to that reality.

For today’s prompt, I invite you to explore uncertainty. Notice where you feel it most keenly in your own life. What does that feel like? Does it pull certain physical sensations with it?

What types of uncertainty do you enjoy or seek out? Which kinds make your muscles clench and your heart race?

Can you recall a past experience of uncertainty that felt overwhelming, but then everything turned out okay? Undoubtedly, you have also had experiences of the opposite—of imagining you knew how things would unfold and then finding yourself blindsided.

If uncertainty had a color, what would it be? If you turned a different hue every time you felt uncertain, what would that color or range of colors be? If uncertainty had a soundtrack, what songs or genre of music do you think would make the cut? How about if uncertainty had a smell? A taste? A book cover? Halloween costume?

My guess is that many of you are living with a heightened sense of uncertainty in this moment, too. I hope that playing with this prompt brings a little lightness into the discomfort of that experience or that giving expression to uncertainty through a poem helps some of the heaviness to drain out. We’re all connected in this, aren’t we? While feeling angsty and off-balance yesterday, I found myself repeating this line from David Whyte over and over: “your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone.” You’re not alone. And neither am I. And I’m grateful for the generosity with which you all remind me of that!

I’m looking forward to your poems, dears.