Saturday, April 9, 2011

Somewhere in the World

"Somewhere in the world...something is happening...which will make its slow way here." Wow. I think that is a really powerful realization. Do you ever think about that? I love what this poem (below - courtesy again of the Writers Almanac - Public Radio is awesome!) is sharing.

Snow here in Salt Lake City...its been snowing for two days, but it doesn't really stick to the roads. Still, up in the hills where we live it looks again like a winter wonderland. It feels so strange to have this kind of weather in April. Sure it does happen occasionally on the east coast - snow in April - but more up in New England and less so in the mid-Atlantic area where I grew up. I think I only remember one time experiencing snow in April. Remember that old Prince song...Sometimes it Snows in April? I was a huge Prince fan in my teenage and college years and I can still remember that song. Was it done by Prince, or one of his proteges? I don't remember now and I can only remember the main chorus.

I am sitting in the SLC airport right now. My Byway is taking me to Washington, DC for a week of work. I am excited to be headed to my old home turf, to feel Spring in DC, to visit my old haunts, to see my friends. I am worried my old cat will decide to finally pass on while I am gone and I am praying he will stick around so I can have a little more time with him. I already know how sad I am going to be when that little furry body isn't around the house anymore. Fifteen years that cat has been with me - through so many ups and downs.

I will miss my husband, my house, my routines. But I believe it is good to disrupt one's patterns like this with a trip on the Byway, away from home and loved ones. It wakes you up, reinvigorates you, snaps you out of any kind of complacency you may have been falling in to. Don't take anything for granted. Live life each day. Love your people. Because somewhere in the world something is happening which will make its slow way here.

See you next time on the other side of this beautiful country -  xo




Somewhere in the World

Somewhere in the world
something is happening
which will make its slow way here.

A cold front will come to destroy
the camellias, or perhaps it will be
a heat wave to scorch them.

A virus will move without passport
or papers to find me as I shake
a hand or kiss a cheek.

Somewhere a small quarrel
has begun, a few overheated words
ignite a conflagration,

and the smell of smoke
is on its way;
the smell of war.

Wherever I go I knock on wood—
on tabletops or tree trunks.
I rinse my hands over and over again;

I scan the newspapers
and invent alarm codes which are not
my husband's birthdate or my own.

But somewhere something is happening
against which there is no planning, only
those two aging conspirators, Hope and Luck.
"Somewhere in the World" by Linda Pastan, from Traveling Light. © W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

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