WILD WOMAN TELLS ALL

 

Wild Woman, Indicating the Direction

Listen up, kids, because

Wild Woman has a few nuggets

of hard-won wisdom to share.

Call 'em Crone Crunchies,

because you can put toppings on them,

and try to make them sweeter,

but in the end,

you're still eating what's underneath:

good for you, if not especially tasty.

 First, you will look all over:

another book, another path,

a different place, a different life,

tried on like your Grandma's old hat,

beautiful in its day,

but bearing no resemblance

to the life you will eventually

call your own.

You will look to person after person

to be that Other who will magically

make you whole,

then find out it is an Inside Job.

Sorry, for that is the hardest truth I know.

Also difficult, but necessary,

is looking Within

and discovering that,

contrary to all your misgivings,

you are not more horrible or less deserving

than any other human.

You'll do, in a pinch.

You will give of yourself till you are

stripped bare, yet it will never

seem to be Enough.

Enough is what, eventually,

you will discover

you are left with, after you stop

all the Looking and the Doing,

and you down-size on

the Reclamation Projects,

for there clearly isn't enough time

to save the world,

or anyone, really, but, perhaps, yourself.

Enough is what's left after you strip away

what doesn't serve you,

sit on whichever porch you've landed up on,

and just stare at the sky

and listen to the birds.

After all that striving and searching,

isn't it a bummer it took so long
to discover

that it's just that easy?

for Susan's prompt at What's Going On: Talking / Conversation