Use Poetry as a Reminder to Break

Judy Pigott, board member, Satterberg Foundation

I loved this when I happened upon it recently. Now, from the beautiful big sky area that is Sun Mountain, it’s better than ever. And it seems to me to be a most appropriate way to view our inclination to rush toward connection while not knowing how to engage honestly, our desire for economy of scale and efficiency while not knowing how to avoid becoming needlessly caught in bureaucracy.

There Are Many Ways to Move Through Our Day

Think first of tracks – to water, to crops, even the latrine –
trails to neighbors, to shady groves along the river,
to secret berry patches, the grassiest meadows always just over
the mountains, across deep currents, the stretch of seeing:

how paths become rutted, become dirt roads, become gravel, black pavement,
whoosh of car and car, lumbering bus, swaying semi-trucks,
then wide freeways and finally airplane scribbles in the sky, the once dark
glowing with glittering satellites. Things change. Often

what’s meant gets lost in saying: space, I guess, is near. Time zips
quicker, flash of a sent text, that new highway. Words gather their heavy loads,
meaning from many directions. Perhaps, today, we can remember

those trucks toward clear water, first bridges, the secret trails to a meadow,
berry vines, and the lines that bind all of us. Sometimes, we can pick
our routes. We can choose to say connect and mean closer together.

Tod Marshall

 

 

 

 

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