My day

(in response to Anaphora, a poem by Elizabeth Bishop)

One day it will be my day,

like the days they all were mine.

I didnt percieve them as my days,

took them for granted all the time.

Wished for a husband, a child,

someone/ones to give my days to,

a child came but not a husband,

and my Wednesday child brought woe.

Our days are intertwined and bound

together in a forever feeling way,

but today I was reminded that one day,

one day soon my day again will be my day.

What I would do today

I wouldnt hold on to yester day

or try to figue out yester year

I would weave my silver linings

around the precious pearl of pain

that grows in brilliance and softness.

My day. I take my book onto my lap, into my hands. It does not rest on the table, laid out before me on a firm foundation. I hold it close to me, feel its weight and flex leaning into me. My thumb presses the top edge, holding it in place, a place of my choosing. My day. How much do I choose my day? I feel or rather think I create it each day according to how I feel. “What are you doing tomorrow?” my partner asks. Half the week I have a structure, things to do, places to go, appointments to keep. The other half my answer is “I don’t know. I’ll see how I feel.” In theory I feel a permissive-ness at this lack of structure, a freedom to attend to my feelings, to see what and how I respond to the day; what mood I wake in, what the weather is like, how my body feels. In theory I will pay this attention and provide the nurturing or stimulation I need. In practice, it can be the turning of an ocean line, tediously slow and wieldy, to find, dredge up, any spark to action of any kind. I am learning now and some days I manage to do it, to pay a deeper attention, to fully embrace the exhaustion, the aches and pains, not in a sinking, giving up, throwing my hands in the air, way, but a deep breathing into them, an enquiring, a hearing, a shifting, a discovery of what lies there and beyond, a moving into clarity and an ease of getting up, getting on. I don’t know how connected I am to what I am writing now. I have slipped into self-consciousness and I’m not sure how comfortable I am. Who am I writing for? Who am I getting up for? That’s the important question for me in the morning. Not to get up out of habit, or feel I should. But to locate within me the part of me that wants to get up, that has a realistic idea of how I can live my day with satisfaction. How I can sustain myself, not drag myself through a day. I don’t always find her. There are still too many days of forcing myself or surrendering to fatigue hopelessly. But the days when she is there, picking her way carefully through the daisies, not crushing or grasping for handfuls, just surveying, appreciating, finding a path instinctively through without harm, these are the days for me.