Let Jubilation Take Us

Happy New Year, Dear Ones! While this is a somewhat arbitrary beginning, I do find this turning of the calendar page invites a deeper inhale and more forceful exhale. It can be a potent time to recommit and to let go.

Today’s draft comes from a daily practice I’ve been trying. I read a poem, then choose a line or phrase from that poem as the prompt for my morning pages. I am currently working my way through George Ella Lyon’s book, She Let Herself Go. (I highly recommend this book, and I recommend you visit your local indie bookstore to order/purchase it.) The line that led to today’s draft was “Let jubilation take us.”

What is there to celebrate

besides everything?

The bitter half-warmth of cheap coffee,

the ache in my arms from exercise class

reminding me not to push so hard,

that my words are visible, even when placed gently on the page.

Let us celebrate this exhaustion,

this new day creeping over the edges of the night,

broken nails and bruised legs,

the ache of a muscle used to the limits of its capacity.

Let us celebrate the love of my beloved,

the unwavering beautiful presence of him,

the smile and the pain and the realness of him.

Let us celebrate literacy, words,

the actions of the sartorius muscle that allow me to sit on my writing cushion.

My friends, let us celebrate nothing,

the great dissolve into the ether,

the coming loss of all of everything,

save the open field of love woven between the cells of air.