Burgeon

The first thought in my head upon waking was “what can I do differently?”

Anything. Choose eggs over skipping breakfast. Walk in the opposite direction of the pond. Make a call to a less familiar friend.  Shower.

Just – anything to break the bud on the branch, to start again in a new direction. I’m not suggesting ripping up roots, or messing with the solid stuff in the center. I just know that I’m being shadowed by my own umbrageous ways, and I need sun, and a new way up and out.

A breath. A large breath. And still, my whole being rises and falls the same way it did yesterday. I need to slow it down and find the smallest possibility. Close in. I need to find the nub and the node, the minuscule swell, the most generous cell for beginning.

What will bend the branch; where will I break?

I only know it stems from here.

No grand gestures needed. No relocation, no burn. Though a storm would be welcome; ushering in the drama and the drain, pushing me forward, or back, or down. It’s more difficult, I find, to be in the quiet light of day in the middle of the ordinary, and still, wake yourself.

To be born in middle of it all, to be new in the same afternoon, to burgeon in the plain – the stillness seems a rotten place for fresh. But I know the truth of it. I know that microscopic isn’t meager; it is infinite.  Whatever will blossom, whatever will grow, whatever will wake me.

It all stems from here.