Letting Go Some More – or Falling Away?

I thought I had let go,
     but something in my head
     (or somewhere; I really can’t find it)
     still feels chained  
     by limitations that
     cancer demands.

I notice the roses outside
     release a few petals at a time.
Like the rose dropping petals,
     or a maple tree undressing in autumn,
     letting go of errant beliefs 
     seems to happen
           gradually 
              in its own time
                when conditions are right
                   effortlessly (though often there’s effort)

Maybe it’s not really a letting go that happens
     but more a falling away
         everything moving 
            in utter perfection
               falling
                 falling
                    freeing
                       freeing
                          making compost for new life.  



Carol Barrow
June, 2018               

Letting Go (Some more)

For six years
   except when I forgot
I thought I was the wife
   of a man with cancer,
   of a man treating lymphoma
   in his own way, ignoring
   the doctors and studies

But one day —
   it happened last week —
   I put down the labels.
Don't ask me how
   I carried them, nor
   how I put them down.
None of it makes sense
   to me now.

But I have to laugh
   at how a belief
   needs constant
   remembering
   or it will die.
Now, if nothing else,
   I want to remember one thing.
There's one thing
   I never want to let die
   and that is
        Love.



Carol Barrow
June, 2018

Letting Go

​​

To what can I hold on? 

     Is there anything that​ I have which can be let go​? 

          This belief, that desire, this pain. Already gone.

               Everything is constantly ​becoming what's next.

Day gives way to fiery sunset, then ​to ​the quiet of night.

     In​-​breath will always relax and breathe out. 

          I try to hold your beautiful smile so I can feel love forever, 

                but it slips through my fingers like a handful of water,

                     into the stream of now, of This, of...

Carol Barrow

June, 2018

#16

A blue jay 

speeds 

like 

a fighter jet 

through 

our 

backyard 

each evening 

between 

8 and 8:30. 

My 

security clearance 

doesn’t 

give 

me 

access 

to 

the reason 

for 

his mission.

Carol Barrow

June, 2017

God Kisses

On Sunday, she walked out the back door with the intention of allowing the scenery around her to inspire some writing. But the air was cool for sitting, so she laid her journal and pen on the table and walked into sunlight, scanning the view around her. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains touched the eastern sky. To the west, the San Luis Valley spread out wide and flat until it reached the San Juan range some hundred-fifty miles away. She took a deep breath of pine-scented air and began to explore the property where she was staying during her retreat.

Watching her footing amidst the stones and cactus, she caught sight of a ginormous moth grasping the base of low dry grasses. It was colored various shades of brown, with a fake blue eye on the upper corners of each forewing. Its antennae were like delicate feathers.

  

The woman crouched down to admire the moth’s size and design. She compared her index finger to the wingspan and saw that the creature was every bit as wide as her finger was long. She would later learn that this was a Glover’s Silkmoth, a member of North America’s family of giant silk moths.

She had somewhere to go, but before leaving she lightly touched the insect, only motivating it to move its wing slightly, as though lifted by a subtle breeze. She sensed the moth must be dying and would be dead by the time she returned. That afternoon, it was gone.

Four days later, on a Thursday morning, as she moved some papers off the counter, her attention was drawn outside the window to something like a leaf floating down. She walked over to the glass and saw on the ground the forewing of a Glover’s Silkmoth.

  

   

She immediately felt an even deeper connection between the moth and herself. Their interactions were a gift. A God kiss, she called it. She felt blessed. And she was.

But, looking up at the brilliant green of the aspen on the side of nearby peaks, and breathing in the freshness of the pine-scented air, she realized that God kisses too numerous to count show themselves every moment. Ah! There went one! Did you notice?

  

Carol Barrow

June, 2018

#15

She was half walking half skating on those shoes with wheels hidden in the heels. She was coming up the sidewalk as I was going down. Maybe she was ten. She was laughing and singing and moving on her wheeled shoes. Laughing and singing and moving on her wheeled shoes, happy, unselfconscious. Something welled up in me. I wanted to do what she was doing! I could feel the freedom inside my chest. For nearly a second, her eyes and my eyes met. No, it wasn’t our eyes that met. They were just the portals for something else that recognized itself. We passed each other, and I wondered… If I wanted to do what she was doing, wouldn’t I do it? What was stopping me? Somewhere between ten and now, somewhere long ago, I began to care what others thought of me. So, no, I didn’t want to do what she was doing, because I cared more about how it would look than I did about laughing and singing and moving with or without wheeled shoes. 


Carol Barrow
May, 2018