Some evenings, after days when the world feels
like it has poured all of its despair onto me,
when I am awash with burdens that rests atop
my body like a burlap of jostling shadows,
I find a place to watch the sun set. I dig
my feet into a soil that has rebirthed itself
a millions times over. I listen to the sound
of leaves as they decide whether or not
it is time to descend from their branches.
It is hard to describe the comfort one feels
in sitting with something you trust will always be
there, something you can count on to remain
familiar when all else seems awry. How remarkable
it is to know that so many have watched the same
sun set before you. How the wind can carry
pollen and drop it somewhere it has never been.
How the leaves have always become the soil
that then become the leaves again. How maybe
we are not so different from the leaves.
How maybe we are also always being reborn
to be something more than we once were.
How maybe that's what waking up each morning is.
A reminder that we are born
of the same atoms as every plant and bird
and mountain and ocean around us.
—Clint Smith, "For the Hardest Days," from Counting Descent (Write Bloody Publishing, 2016).
