I hope you’re not as hard on yourself as I am.
I hope your mistakes, gaffes, goof-ups, and disasters drift behind you like arguing strangers on the street, or automobile exhaust in a summer breeze, or some other mildly disturbing but easily forgotten, unremarkable occurrence in your day. And as they fade away you simply go about the business of taking care of whatever spilled, broke, got hurt, forgotten, misassembled, or bungled, without giving yourself a hard time.
I’m not like that. I’m a whole lot harder than that.
If you feel like you might be more like me, then I hope you’re also like me in the following way. Imagine you’ve just broken something that someone you really care about really likes. Perched on your shoulder is a demon that looks exactly like a bright red parrot. It’s squawking angrily in your ear. It’s telling you something about yourself and what you’ve just done. That could be the only thing you ever hear.
However, if you’re lucky enough to be like me, perched on your other shoulder is an angel that looks exactly like a mockingbird, and it’s singing in your ear a song about yourself that is always lovely and true, no matter what mistake you might have made. The squawking stops from time to time. The song goes on and on.
6/5/2022
APPENDAGE
He grew an extra appendage
during the course of his long life
and exercised it every day without thinking
and without the reluctance he usually wrestled against
when exercising any other part of his body,
until it was the strongest part of him by far – a third leg
with which he kicked his own ass – relentlessly,
and with unflagging vigor.
Bill Jeffers
12/8/2021
THIS KIND OF MORNING
It was a knock over the thermos full of water on the kitchen counter trying to make my coffee watching it spreading under all the things on the counter and dripping off the edge and where is the sponge kind of morning
A drop the knife flat across my perfectly marbled peanut butter and jelly swirl on my morning toast with the bad news droning from the radio and my perfect cup of coffee getting cold on the counter while I’m wiping off the knife and licking off my fingers kind of morning
But somehow not a self-defeating morning, story-of-my-life morning, e-vry-day-the-same-old-thing kind of morning, why-does-this-al-ways-ha-pen-to-me morning with a sad shake of the head, it’s al-ways-go-na-be-the-same.
It was a laugh at myself morning because I’m a clumsy human animal morning. It was a wake up pay attention morning. I felt good this morning.
It wasn’t a stirring sunrise glory through the cloud’s morning. Not a profound inspiration morning. Just some self-created ridiculous problems to solve morning, a couple messes to clean up.
And that could be what the day would hold, what every day might hold: problems to solve, messes to clean up, some laughs along the way.
And later, with the sun going down, night near, it might have been
a pretty good day kind of day.
Bill Jeffers
08/05/2021
THE SURPRISE
One day to his surprise
he found a door
that he had never noticed before.
It was in his chest.
It was right above his heart.
He wondered how
he could have missed it
all these years.
Whenever he opened it,
inside, it was a place
that whispered to him
in his own voice, reminding him
of something he had always known –
about a goodness and a gladness
in himself and in the life that he had lived,
and that awaited him
once he returned again
to his life outside.
And it always did.
Bill Jeffers
5/25/2022
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