This is the time to be slow,

Lie low to the wall

until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best as you can, not to let

the wire brush of doubt

scrape from your heart

all sense of yourself

and your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,

Time will come good;

and you will find your feet

again on fresh pastures of promise,

where the air will be kind,

and blushed with beginning.

~John O’Donohue

I can’t today. I just can’t.

inquiry for today~ and you? how will you show up when you just can’t?

for the love of hope

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

~Ellen Bass