The Most Rudimentary of Things

And when it all comes undone,
you go back to the basics.
Light. Dark. The simplest brushstrokes on a canvas.
Primary colors. Breath work.
In. Out. In again. Paying attention
to yourself in the oldest of ways.

In the end, there is nothing to fix
beyond yourself, and the quiet allows you
to feel. It is, starting over,
both immensely difficult and startingly simple.
In. Out. In again. The most rudimentary of things,
yet the claiming of its essence takes practice
and too often the world around you
is too much.

About this poem.

About meditation. About my own difficulty with strong, strong emotions. About rebulding. Poetry is never about one thing.

The picture is of the barn at the Hancock Shaker Village in Hancock, Mass

Tom