Swing Low

The night is long and dark. And it seems like the sun breaks for only a few hours before night descends again. 

I’m up and I’m winning, and I’m floating on a trade wind...and then I blow sideways and I’m mired again: gossamer wings tacked down to a tarbaby. I’m flat on my back and crying a puddle that rises so quickly around me; I’m in serious danger of drowning myself. Life is funny like that. Our victories are so hard won... and our defeats blow in like breath: rhythmic and predictable. 

When I get a handhold, I climb so quickly and so steadily. All across the land people turn and gaze up...amazed by my progress...astounded to watch my ascension. Then more quickly still, more abruptly, more memorably than I began...I lose my handhold or my footing and I come crashing violently back to earth. 

Just when I’m confident that I’ve cleared the largest obstacles...a tiny pebble steals my momentum. There I am again, toiling on tenuous ground. 

I woke up yesterday and I was confident that I’d accomplished something great. I had written a new chapter for myself; completely of my own design and manifestation. Then today, the sun sets on me completely and I’m convinced that I’m finished. No more push, no more pull left in me. Faith drained dry. Prospects dim. Capacity admonished. I cannot imagine that I could inhale on a new sunrise; and swing my legs out of bed; and pull clothes over my body; and carry myself through another day. That I could withstand the minutes in an hour, or the hours in a circle of the sun. How does one hang on the edge of oblivion and not feel the icy fingers of it, rising around the heart. I do. I pull air deep into my lungs and I feel the freeze gripping my throat. Snowdrifts rise in my eye wells. I strain and reach and grasp to hold on to those who have woven my story into their own. I pull frantically at my thread, to cast toward them enough line to travel the distance of their tapestry. But secretly, I’m terrified that I will plummet into the abyss; unraveling with me, the integrity of my thread throughout our histories: mine and many. All I can say is ‘I’m sorry...The line was long, but not long enough. It hung me in the end. Goodbye’.