June #4

Round and Round and Round and Round …

And round we go again,

spinning again on this pretty planet

as if the intricate dance 

were forever, its patterns important.

The moment seems to matter.

My cats are old and sick, my man is dead.

Tell me that’s not important.

Important to me — but not to some stranger

across the world, not to

animals in zoos or jungles, not at all

to insects living their little lives

and not to the stars in space, nor the space.

My friend is sad for her old mother

finally dead in her nineties: wondering, “Did I do 

enough?” (She did. I was witness.)

All these small human dramas we all repeat,

caught in the cycle. As if brand new

as we each meet each one as if for the first time.

Yet when we sink to restful emptiness,

how well we know that music, that old refrain.

It wells up to remind us, nothing 

is new, nothing is really unknown, nothing 

is individual. We spin our lives

again and again on our spinning planet.

Round and round and round and round 

we go again — caught in the spin, dreaming 

our little dramas as if they were real, 

as if we were here, as if we were now, as if….

(Lately I dream that I dream.

Does this mean I’m ready to wake?)

— Rosemary Nissen-Wade

("Round and round and round and round we go again" — I'm not plagiarising, just alluding!)