Time to be Slow and Generous
/“This is the time to be slow…”
~ John O’Donohue
Today the air has a biting chill to it even though the sun shines brightly here in the Bay Area. A day to tie one’s scarf around the neck and pull our jackets closed against the golden breeze. Winter is edging herself ever closer to us, here in the northern hemisphere. The winter solstice is only a day away.
As I sit down to write today’s poem, I am searching for inspiration. I have many words swirling inside my psyche, like the ochre leaves twirling outside my window, carried upward upon the last of autumn’s gale, before they sail down to rest upon the damp earth. But where is this solstice poem that longs to be born?
I turn to another poet for my “prompt”. I sometimes invoke this practice when I am by myself, or I introduce it as a start, when I facilitate a “process poetry” moment in a workshop. I think of it as a fertile “call and response”, an invitation of sorts, to stimulate a conversation with my Muse.
Today I call upon Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue to speak with me, to inspire me. And he does not disappoint. In response to the call of his evocative poem, “This is the Time to be Slow”, I write my own poem, about winter, both personal and universal, and I offer both of them to you below as we welcome the winter solstice:
This is the Time to be Slow by John O'Donohue
“This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall,
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best 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.”
“My Response to John O'Donohue's Call to be Slow”
I gather the grey cloak of winter around me,
nestle into the mantle of darkness, now draping my shoulders,
I stoke the faint embers of my own fire, nearly gone cold,
remembering vaguely how to poke and prod reluctant sparks,
coax and convince my bashful flame to reignite,
from the sparse remnants of smoldering ash.
Autumn has laid me in the lap of hibernal embrace,
Time slows down, and I receive the grace of frost, the generosity of chill,
and I accept the invitation to lie low to the wall, to get still, to be wholly lost.
In the quiet oscillation between shivery constriction and quivering expanse,
I hibernate inside the cold wet earth of my being,
undulate between self doubt and hesitant new light.
The opposite of doubt is not certainty, rather it is trust,
not allowing the wire brush of doubt to scrape away my sense of self,
I apply the gentle shammy of trust, to the spiraled ribbons inside my heart,
and during this winter night of my soul, I polish each buried treasure,
trusting in life’s seasons, trusting the rhythm and cadence of her music,
to reveal the hesitant light, hidden just beneath the dust.
In the dormant months of slow, I vow to tend to my heart’s knowing,
and with utmost tenderness, protect the seed germinating in the womb of me,
to nourish and fertilize the ground of my wholeness, resting in basic goodness,
encouraging my heart roots to sprout and earth themselves, deep and vibrant,
so when spring arrives, she shall find me inspired and powerfully rooted,
my feet planted on the fresh ground of promise,
my face upturned to the sun, blushed with beginning...
