River of Time
~
Another week has floated off down river
Never to be lived again.
Did you spend it progressing your world?
Did you spend it experiencing Zen?
~
But “spend” conjures capitalist conceptions of time
As a medium of exchange – a property of “mine”
To be traded away, gambled, bartered and sold
What does such a worldview congeal in your soul?
~
Could time instead be that old beautiful river
Flowing endlessly through dry land – a life giver
And we, carried along its inevitable flow
A rich mythic wellspring to guide how we go.
~
Did you face wild rapids this week, with treach’rous rocks?
Or entangled in memories, like mangrove rootstocks?
Do you tend to float aimless, inert as driftwood?
Would you swim like a salmon to beginnings if you could?
~
Are you drowning?
Gasping for air,
Floundering fast…
Gazing with longing at the shore that flows past.
~
Would that I could swim like an otter, playful and sleek
Safe in my raft of mates, sharing warm fishy reek
Neither longing for banks nor dreading the sea
When we accept our constraints, our rivers flow free.
~
But spending, or swimming, that time is now gone
We can but review, and renew, whatever course we are on.
~
Joe Blogs, 2022
Image by Chanwity via Pixabay