Friends of Bill W.

[LeftWriteFemme]

February 13


NIGHT FLIGHT

The small log shape with large wings passed the windshield of my moving car without collision, due to meticulous calculation and correction in a night sky. Silent passage… swift and meaningful, the owl lives as it knows how. I was not born to the night; darkness not my given realm. I have inverted my senses and compensated for the moonlight. I pull my way through the air and hunt for my survival in a world of shadows. The morsels caught on the wing, snatches of conversations and lines from books, sustain me, give me strength to live in spite of the nocturnal bondage. I have made peace with the night. I am changed by my living and my living endures. The grace required to abide here is bestowed on me nightly. I wear it though it is not the prize I sought.


Write a letter home to you.

*

Whittle it Down


A famous sculptor mentioned
that he doesn’t so much create the objects
as remove the stone which doesn’t belong.

I have had the same experience with willingness.
Encased in the bedrock of my will
willingness had no opportunity to open doors.

Flaking away the extraneous
the key shape appears, rugged, blockish, rudimental.
As the tears stream down my face
and wrong thinking flies from my brain
the key is more finely formed.

As I wheedle at misconception
and haul bodily wrong action
the teeth of this thing show sharp in this day’s sun.

Many doors stand ajar,
at first those with basic tumblers,
but now even those with encrypted defense
are no match for the willingness,
which I wield with rapier wit.

The obvious blocks to progress open to me
as well as the subtle doors to untold destination,
I am let out of danger, released into possibility.




You are reading selections from Sober on the Way to Sane and More Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault