What Really Matters?

Just got the news.
A friend took his life.
What really matters?

He mattered
to me
to many others.
Did he not know?
Did it not matter?

Does mattering mean
that we are obliged
to suffer so others won't?
I would never put that on him
or anyone.

Does it matter that
the two friends I've
had who took their lives
were smart and
kind and
creative
and
we
needed
them more
than we need
the politicians
doing damage to
this precious, fragile
world? Who invented
this game, anyway? And why?

The ripples of
sorrow, they matter.
The guilt - I hadn't
reached out in some time - egoic
but a reminder again and again.
Love, love, love, love, love.
Please let us love this tender,
tender, hurting world and
all in it with our whole
being. We can't
afford to be
stingy
with
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love

What Really Matters... To Me

A woman on a bike with a kiddie trailer behind it pauses at the stop sign and asks her young son which way he wants to go to the library. He is on a bike so small you could step over it with no effort. He is on a bike that requires no balance, no pedals. He walk-rides his little bike with equally little legs. He wants to go this way. Mom suggests that way, but he wants to go this way, so she says Okay. Then they take off, mom turning the way her son wants to; her son taking off straight in a near collision with her. But then he turns, and they pass my house on their way to the library. That really matters to me.

My heart cracks at the adorability of the son finding his way in this world, balancing and falling and exploring, which will lead to... We don't know where he will go as he grows. That not knowing really matters to me.

And the sky is blue above the mom and son (and also on whomever it might be who rides along in the kiddie trailer behind), and there is peace in the air. Beautiful skies and peace really matter to me, and so does the library down the street that houses so much wonder, we would all explode if we tried to take it all in. That little boy will walk into the wonder and choose to let in just a bit. And that little bit might take him to other lands, to new learning, and wild imagination. Wonder and imagination really matter to me.

Even though my son and daughter are now old enough to be parents, their little legs are still just as real to me as the legs of that little boy walk-riding his bike down the street. As with that mother, the mothering within me is as alive as ever, though I now channel it many directions, because my son and daughter don't need the mothering of a child, though they do need as much mothering as everything else — the planet and everything on it. I smile because beings of all kinds —whether human, duck, finch, cow, you name it — mother our world, and that is beautiful, and that really matters to me.

This is not all that really matters to me. Honestly, when my heart is open, everything that shows itself really matters.
 

What Matters?

what matters?

     i don’t know.

     do you?

     if so,

     how did you find out?

          if you found out,

               did you find that it’s

what matters

            to you? Does

what matters,

     matter to me?

          your family?

               your friends?

                    your city?

                         your country?

                              the world?

     does this

          matter?

     does that

          matter? 

     nothing matters

     everything matters

what matters?

     what

          what

               what

                    matters

                         matters

                              matters

what was the question?

ah

     ah

          awe

Carol Barrow

July, 2018

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