Practicing

by Patricia Meek

Let the lazy take you where it wants because you never know.

-Shaman Jim |

Widen your eyes as if in dying,

as if in death.

Surrender

your struggle

like the newborn

seal surrenders its first

hours to the blinding

tundra,

freeze,

and arctic light.

Surrender

to fragility.

This life

whose existence is only certain

second to second. Become the seal—

whose internal furnace

might extinguish

before the return of its mother.

Its God. The only one it genetically remembers.

And when you become that

then widen a bit more

and become this—

a chasm in the earth.

Feel the thousand pounds

of our mother

pressing on your body

like a corpse.

You will remain stationary

until you feel the disconnect

to above ground

that she feels.                                                                                               

The passing storms,

the passing seasons,

the frenetic energy

of wind in trees.

Action that happens in the

quickening of geological time.

This geology is not in her time.

Not in her language.

She has nowhere to go,

but to linger as immortal.

The way you must also do as

you practice

how to become

small

how to become

big.

Practice acceptance

until it is no longer about

getting it right,

but simply being.

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Patricia L. Meek won AWP Intro for Fiction, “The Crucified Bird,” and “Weather” was a 2016 finalist for Rita Dove Award in Poetry. Her writing has recently appeared in Ghost Town Literary Journal, Euphony Journal, Penman Review. Her poetry video series, Dialogue with Georgia O’Keeffe, has been show cased at Rabbit Heart Poetry film festival. Author of NOAH: a supernatural eco-thriller, published by All Things That Matter Press. 
She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Louisiana State University, an MFA in Creative Writing from Wichita State University, and an MA in Counseling from Southwestern College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is currently a medical integration clinician (LPC) in Southern Colorado.