The Long of It and the Steady
by
Charlene Langfur
We all have our way of getting through our lives.
These days, I slowly count each hour on an app assessing
sentences in English digitally. Forty hours every week.
Patience is at the heart of what I do now as I keep
trying to find a way to do what I must do for work
in a world of climate change in which I am getting older,
on a planet increasingly oriented to the young.
My stamina remains the same year after year and
each day I eat oatmeal for a good breakfast, and
take a hardy walk with my golden rescued dog Grace,
and always plan to read some of what I think matters
so I am always learning and discovering what is new
and always, I sit in my small garden with a book.
Each day I come up with a plan for the order of things,
how an hour in a single one of my days feels right.
Today I will work for a flat eight hours of the day,
and I will assess 160 sentences spoken out loud.
On my walks later in the day my dog will be leaping
in the tall wild desert grass. She is all in with life.
Later, I will plant more seeds, parsley and nasturtium
and sit in the garden where the lavender blooms like crazy.
My garden is a small world coming back again and again
and in need of tending as am I and my dog along with me,
like all of us women living alone in a difficult world,
writing poems about flowers blooming in the night,
talking about keeping faith no matter what happens,
about making things right, loving long and being kind.
This is what I’ve learned to do then, know who I am,
know what I can do, tack boundaries, all the width and the depth,
the long of it and the steady, all of the day.