Do you have a place you cozy into like a warm, gentle hug, where you can breathe, and dream and hope? In this most unexpected year, I discovered an unexpected spot. I describe it in this poem I wrote to share with grade 5 and 6 students in their Poetry Coffee House yesterday. Now I'd like to share it with you.
Out My Window
Karen Gonzales
Perched on a chair
In the corner of my bedroom
Slippered feet up,
Strong smooth coffee and dog-eared pages
of an old favourite novel by my side,
I gaze out my 5th floor window
as I do every Saturday morning
after I’ve slept off the full-on fatigue
from the school week before.
I breathe in the scene:
Frosted rooftops fill the panes
Framed by spindly rows of evergreens
poking into the wind-chilled winter sky
In the distance, hills of the Peace River
a green-grey smudge on the horizon.
Twitters of winter birds on a nearby balcony
flitting to mine,
joined in symphony by the hummmm of a snowblower
in the lane below.
This is an unexpected place of refuge
in this unexpected solitary year.
What was, at first, last spring
almost suffocating in the newness of forced isolation,
has become a warm, gentle hug.
A place to breathe and dream and hope.
To reach out in solidarity of solace,
anonymous yet connected.
I breathe out the week:
The worry, the stress,
Held for so many others
in all the nooks and crannies
of my heart and mind and body.
Making space for the moments of wonder
of love and joy and learning.
To settle, to take hold, to shine.
In this moment
This place is enough
I am enough
The world is enough
Out my window.
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