Yesterday afternoon
I put our garden space to bed.
One rake, one shovel, and half a yard
of damp, composted dairy manure.
Sweat on my neck and arms,
back, chest, legs, brow.
Leaves from the neighbor’s dogwood
tree
in my hair and beard.
Today, I am ready for anything.
Even the death
of fear.
7 comments:
'even the death of fear'- one may feel so lonesome, experience a sort of void...
I love the duplicity of that final couplet. "The death of fear," as in dying of it; and "the death of fear" as in its vanquishment. Both are there together; it takes a shift in angle of vision to get from one to the other—and back.
love this...
I wonder, Giacomo. But it does seem we are afraid of being without fear. Thank you.
Thanks, Joe. I see it, and perhaps instinctively even meant, in part, “in dying of it”; the same can be said of “as in its vanquishment”; and yet I would offer a third reading, which we might frame in rather long-winded fashion as “in witnessing the timely departure of something no longer necessary.”
It is truly of the day, Brad — a journal entry, really, and nothing more. Thank you, good sir.
I imagine your picture.
The leaves in hair and beard
and the death is not our fear...
Ah yes,the death of fear...happens everytime I affirm " I choose love" !
Trouble is the little fellow likes to come back as a ghost. Maybe you are right William, in a way we sometimes see him as a friend who is familiar so we have trouble letting him go. Deb
Thank you, Monika. Now that you mention it, maybe I would be a good scarecrow — especially if I could scare fear to death.
I think so, Deb. Somehow it gets all wrapped up in our identity. In letting something go, in trading it for the unknown, we fear losing ourselves.
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