The Work
Summer is a ritual of endurance. The way rain rewinds into haze no color cuts through. Even the tiger lilies surrounding the supermarket parking lot are washed out, mute. Today’s forecast: suffocation. You have to strain to catch the signal that ignites the voice flowering beyond the brain — a language you hardly know as your own, but it is yours. You stand outside the poem, tend to its edges. Worry the seams. Keep it from collapsing. This is the work you’ve been given. A power line in the fog, sloping toward infinity.
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Beautiful. It’s going up to 113 degrees F this week here in Las Vegas. The beginning of 4 months of extreme temperatures. feel this poem’s first line.
This incisive meditation challenges me as I prepare to return to teaching for the upcoming year. I pray that the Lord will grant me the courage & strength to embrace this calling—“the work” I have “been given” seeking “infinity” through daily tasks that signify the eternal in the most unexpected of ways. Thank you!