January 2024 Paper Poetry

Sometimes It Is Hard To Tell When It Is Time To Change

A poem about letting go and beginning again

I’m that last leaf hitched to the tree — it won’t swirl off in autumn gusts, grips fiercely during ruthless rain, holds tight as ice encrusts the earth, still clinging to the snow-bent bough when winter’s blizzards wane.

And as I yield and finally fall I come to rest on a butterfly; we flutter about on fairy wings among spring’s budding blossoms till a wispy breeze brushes me to the soil from whence I sing.

Then from the loam I will rise in treasured cells of a sapling; and as we reach an open view, suffused in hope and sunlight, I stretch upward into time with the gift of beginning anew.

I tend to hold on to the past and present, strenuously sustaining circumstances even after they become unpleasant. Then one day I have a feeling of coming to my senses — a realization that it is time to let go and begin again. Whether external forces instigate change, or it comes from forces within me, I experience opening with hope for the future. Some changes can be disruptive while others come as a gentle shift and sense of growth, as suggested in this poem.

My poem is a response to Indubala Kachhawa’s creative and inspiring prompt from Paper Poetry, INIZIO (Beginning). Thank you from my heart to Indubala, Carolyn Hastings, and the publication’s owner Suntonu Bhadra for allowing me to be a writer for this beautiful home for poetry.