SOLACE THROUGH THE SEASON

Outside Inside is a meditation on the seasons of life—reflecting on both my inner world, and the outer world as seen my backyard in Madison, Wisconsin.

2020-2022

Printed 2023

The season of silence and stillness. 
As life in the outer world becomes barren,
I am pressed to turn
my attention inward
and make peace
with liminal spaces.

Icicles

A momentary break in the cold.
Ice thaws, sending water droplets creeping under gravity toward the furthest edges. 

Icicles stretch delicately longer and
trace each moment of radiant warmth. 
Encroaching, the freeze of night sets in
to crystallize the evidence of passing time. 

The season of my renewal.
I envision the beauty
of my own potential,
and dream of what more
is left for me to be.
Each day I rediscover
the capacity to surprise myself 
in the process of sculpting a life 
that will never be lived again.

Resilience

Life brims with evidence 
of remarkable resilience. 
Broken branches heal,
frail creatures unite, 
and all things grow.

As long as my spirit
holds the will to persist,
my mind and body acclimate, 
and life will forge on.

I’m reminded in my life daily,
after coming back from
what I thought was insurmountable, 
that through sheer force of will
I can accomplish things
I never thought possible.

A season of ecstasy, 
when the world is serene 
and contentment is effortless. 
When I find bliss in simply being present. 
When my spirit is vibrant
and I savor life 
for no more and no less 
than exactly what it is.

Outside I

Open heart,
waves of warmth
wash over my skin 
seeping into every cell.

The boundaries 
between
the sun and
my skin 
dissolve.

The rhythm of 
my heart is left 
exposed
to the breeze.
My soul becomes
the glow of 
golden light. 

The season in which
I hold gratitude for
all that once was,
and embrace the 
inevitability of change.
I seek peace in transitory spaces, 
release my grip on the past, 
and look toward the future 
with optimism and imagination.

Leafs I

My fate is unknowable 
through the eyes of a leaf. 
The best days of my life 
would be spent in belief 
that attachment to a tree 
was everything for me. 
I’d find friendship in
my neighboring leafs, 
imagining we would
live and breathe
as one collective canopy. 

But alas I dry,
I wither, and fall, 
only to be lifted
by the wind
to a foreign distance, 
unveiling wondrous 
new horizons
all in a flash 
at the end 
of a simple, 
static life.