Poets ask us questions we need to answer

April 27, 2008 in Life is a Verb

Questions Before Dark

Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you? Are the corners
sharper or rounded off? Did you
live with death? Make decisions
that quieted? Find one clear word
that fit? At the sun’s midpoint
did you notice a pitch of absence,
bewilderment that invites
the possible? What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again? Did you set a straw
parallel to the river, let the flow
carry you downstream?

-Jeanne Lohmann

Tell me, has this day changed you?

About Patti Digh

Patti Digh is an author, speaker, and educator who builds learning communities and gets to the heart of difficult topics. Her work over the last three decades has focused on diversity, inclusion, social justice, and living and working mindfully. She has developed diversity strategies and educational programming for major nonprofit and corporate organizations and has been a featured speaker at many national and international conferences.

1 comment to " Poets ask us questions we need to answer "


Rick

April 28, 2008 AT 10:54PM

What a marvelous means of getting to the core question, at least the one I hope to arrive at once in awhile: How have I changed, be it today or since I last pondered this question? It is not a question that emerges on a daily basis, but why shouldn’t it? The consideration of the question can only be one we grow from, learn from.

It is the absence of this question in our consciousness which is most dangerous, as we then begin with a fallacy in all our thought processes: considering ourselves to be the rock, the unchanging one. There is no accurate perspective in that arena.