January 31st Challenge: Stay Awake

Did you miss me this morning?

I'm fighting off a virus and took to my bed early last night, before I post the last of the January Challenges.  

I'm ambivalent about endings. I feel good to have started and finished something, and intimidated by a narrative that the last post be Big and Meaningful and wrap everything up nicely.  

This poem has been on my desk for a while, waiting for you all.  It's Big and Meaningful, maybe a little too much.  There's a lot in here to consider:  being known and deep listening to The Other, being authentic in relationship, staying mindful, and accepting reality.  I guess that DOES wrap things up for the month nicely.

I used to want to get a tattoo that said "Stay Awake"-- just a tiny one, maybe in Czech, that would remind me to stay mindful.  But I worried that's the wrong permanent message to give a chronic insomniac, so I read this poem once in a while instead.  I hope you find as much to love in it as I do.

Thank you for playing along this January.  I'll continue to blog and post homework occasionally.  I'd love to have you along. 

A Ritual To Read To Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

William Stafford