Absence, The Quiet Unmarked Path

A man I love gave a talk one time and he pointed out that when my distress is mainly mental, or when it is physical at least the mental component can be dealt with by focussing the time frame. He said that there is really nothing wrong right now. He said whenever there is distress it is either coming from the future or the past and if I narrow my time frame to right now my pain will be already over or not yet here. In other words it is nearly always true that there is nothing wrong right now.

I had a heart attack. I used this right now thing. Except for the hours of that bloody nose, which was really just irritating, there was nothing wrong right now. The pain was never more than manageable. The drugs did not distress me overmuch right now. Even the shit for brains nurses (the two on shift during the bloody nose) were mostly not there and that was fine with me. I did not fret through any of it.

Absence

Today, I'm absent.
I do not sit in this seat.
I deny presence.
I have no purpose
For being gone, but gone I am.
I would be here now
If I was but, no,
I am not here, not waiting
And not writing this.

January 18, 2009 9:08 AM

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Here's a dream, a place I would like to be, behavior I would like for my own. There is a poem called Footprints that is a complaint and God's answer. Perhaps the footprints I write of here are something like that. Waiting for divine footprints.

The Quiet Unmarked Path

Here's a true silence
Drifting down like fine snowflakes
Collecting around
My tree, cooling me
As I perch on this lowest
Limb trying to see
The lines of all things.

Among things I hope I see,
Footprints may appear,
May lead me further
On this quiet unmarked path.
In the drifting snow.

January 18, 2009 9:23 AM