For some, you’ll never be angry enough.
Never clean enough.
Never correct enough.
Never have enough
righteous indignation
or proper agency to protect.
For some, you’ll forgive too much.
Or too little.
Or say too much
without saying anything at all.
For some,
you will be too quiet.
Such is the rhythm of the earth.
A pendulum swinging
not just back and forth,
but around,
circling a fulcrum
it never gets to touch.
Not in person anyway.
But if you can see it,
you can be it.
Put yourself there.
Close your eyes and feel
the weight swirling around you.
Are you there?
That’s the place where grace lives.
Where you can stand
inside the cyclone
and absorb the hurt,
knowing everything is temporary.
No, more than that.
It’s where you can feel the power within yourself,
given from something out of sight,
and lamenting the world’s centrifuge,
fret less,
as you join
the centripetal moorings of the earth.
You can accept without accepting.
Love without loving.
Teach without teaching.
Not in the declaration
but in the living.
With no one seeing
how you pulled through.
Or let go.
Or pushed just enough.
Going for no other reward
than to be there.
Because you want to be.
Because it’s where this all goes.
And nobody
seems to be there yet.
— ❧ —
In Verse
Today’s poem was inspired by the tumultuous upheaval going on right now in our society. The national discord is the worst I’ve seen in my lifetime, and The Fulcrum is about finding ourselves—our best selves—as individuals, so that we can manage the storm that surrounds us. If you like poetry, you can find more at In Verse.