A Change in Foundations

You do your best work
where there are no clocks.
Where time emptying
is valued as highly as time creating,
producing, doing all those things
others expect of you.

You appreciate being valued,
being trusted, being reliable.
It feeds the child, the first bornness in you.
A need bred to your bones
far sooner than, looking back,
you would have liked.

You cannot deny your bones.
They shape you and hold you,
well knit or not, they cast shadows
even in the dark.

But it is here, in the nothing, in the empty
that you became an adult. Something surprising.
Something different. Not because of actions
or what you do, but why, and how.
A strange swap of foundations, the new stone
finally strong enough to hold the weight
of what came before.

About this poem.

Not at all the poem I intended to write. About faith and life and growth and aging and discovery. Probably about some other things too, but that’s all I got at 8:15 in the morning.

Tom