We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage / And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of the proud old lineage / Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why ... (James Elroy Flecker)

10.6.20

Hello Earth #10

Hello, dear Earth

Here I am, warm in my cosy home while it rains outside.

Earth, I killed a cockroach and now I feel guilty; I think I’m a monster. But they creep me out so, fill me with irrational terror. I think it was my own fear I was trying to kill. (Not offering this as excuse. It’s a new self-understanding.)

Leaning in, I try to calm my breathing. I try to face what I did without belittling it. I don’t believe I had a right to kill it; but if I wasn’t here talking to you it would be easy to gloss over the whole thing, tell myself it didn’t matter.

Listing gratitudes doesn’t come easily at this moment – but I can be grateful that, in whatever way, I have gained the strength to confront myself.

Offering my attention to your wisdom. What would you want me to do another time? An answer comes in awareness of what I can do now — work on overcoming the irrational fear, so that next time I will not be cruel and murderous to something that would do me no harm.


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