Wednesday, November 24, 2010

NOT ONE LASTS


Everyone is familiar with Sandburg’s poem Nothing Gold Can Stay, but I like his Autumn Movement better for its lack of rhyme, the color and imagery and rhythms.  I suppose I also like it because I cry so easily that the poem makes sense to me at a gut level.

I am grateful for the impermanence of this beautiful, wretched life.  Good, wonderful, happy moments don’t last.  Like a swallow of sweet tea or a bite of toast, they are savored and gone.  Clinging to people, places and things only creates unhappiness in forms like greed and envy and jealousy.

Striving to be mindful, I am grateful for impermanence.  Pain, disappointment and obstacles don’t last either.  They fade, I grow and learn or, at the least, there are gaps in the hurt, places where I can breathe and feel the space. I must look at thing I fear.  I have to see and hear the person who makes me mad or makes me uncomfortable.  Then I know that I can understand myself through my perceived weakness, my anger, my discomfort.   Avoidance and intentional ignorance only create unhappiness.

 “…and the old things go, not one lasts.”  Thank you impermanence.  Read the Poem 

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