Now this sketchbook seems small

 

Now this sketchbook seems small—

prayers stretch it, oceans don’t fit, 

time overflows the pages.

How long is this minute?

How wide is the street I have to cross during it?

I’m not talking relativity. Time and space actually

change—stretch and shrink like a favorite pair of jeans.

And the change isn’t dependent on an unknown

waiting on the other side. I set my goal 

before trying to get my hands and feet on it, but magic is reality.

I won’t complain about insights that surprise, astonish,

and at times please in the logic of mystery that builds my faith

in nature, in the marriage of nature and extra-natural life like feeling,

spirit, soul, God, and intention. See how thoughts get too big for the lines

allotted them? It’s like two fishes feeding a crowd, or how

some of us lasso reality and bend it to our needs—

things as small as words, as big as oceans and ideas, and

spilling over as how words, oceans, and ideas marry

or intersect, and send out offshoots that run to and from

other fields of creativity. Now this sketchbook seems small.

It’s too small to nap on, but I’m tired of opening

to flowing life that wants to animate me. So small.

And life is big, big. I haven’t reached the other side.

 My blog poems are rough drafts.

   Please respect my copyright. 

 If you quote, credit this page.

     © 2021 Susan L. Chast