How to do nothing

Do something, do and do and do, 
whispers a voice I always assumed was my own. 

But what if not doing is a better choice?
An act of kindness not only to myself, but to my children,
to the spaces I inhabit and the values I hold within. 

Something is awry if the act of stopping hurts the most,
when rest is a force of illness and not of freedom,
and every moment is beholden to productivity or guilt
or both. 

I have kept a blog for many years
almost half my life, it's evidence of my doing:
words and photographs for show and tell 
and belonging (adoration and validation),
but they will always be a poor imitation
a carefully framed illusion,
​never quite delivering, deep contentment
to me, or you. 

What if there's another way to document our lives
that doesn't reduce our stories and feelings and places
and things into a shadowy reflection?
And it's as simple as doing nothing:
just being present in our own flesh and bones,
hearing each other speak, pausing.

We have a bush of Hebe in the front garden
that is gloriously awash with pink flowers - 
it is pretty to behold but it's the sound
that stops me in my steps
of many hundreds of bees, gathering

I walk every day on the farm
it is my summer prayer:
to feel the dry earth under my feet
and hear the birds and smell the dry grass
and let myself be seen, moving
without hope to take away or consume

I am knitting a top from unravelled yarn
there is no need to rush,
and so it emerges with kinks and crinkles
at the pace that is life right now:
up and down, and all over the place. 

Summer is a contrast
blue sky and grey earth,
golden grass and flame flowers,
cloudy and sunny and dry and crisp
slow and steady and changeable:

it is nothing and everything.

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