There is so much about the holiday season that can make us feel like we and our lives aren't enough: the numerous social engagements that require more time and energy than we have; the extra end-of-the-year work projects that demand our attention; the obligatory visits with family members who may judge us and friends who seem to have accomplished more than we have; the frantic over-the-top cheerfulness that flies in the face of our need to rest and just be.
If the aches and pains of the season have left you feeling inadequate, may “To Contentment,” a poem by Pushcart Prize nominee Richard Lehnert, be healing balm. Lehnert’s poems always put me in touch with my soul. I hope this one helps you find your way to yours. It’s a reminder to celebrate all that you have and all that you are, no matter what remains unfinished or unrealized in your life.
This year, instead of self-judgment and “not-enoughness,” may the holidays bring you the “endless golden afternoon” of feeling content with the simple sacredness of yourself and your life.
To Contentment
By Richard Lehnert
Dusty sentiment of an antique age
do you remember
that sepia print of you
holding in long withered arms
tiny screaming me
already so unlike your side of the family
and well practiced for a lifetime of complaint
No one I know wants or remembers you
and when I tell them I have learned
you and I are distant relatives
embarrassed for me they look down
eyes hooded smiles knowing
dropping hints of their intimacies
with passion grief and ecstasy
as if you were not mother to us all
as if in its long dream each life
does not some day find a door
in a wall that never had one
and now has always opened to
a room we have never seen
and instantly know again
and there of course are you
having waited all this time
to ask if we would not like
to sit and share a pot of tea
and talk without urgency
of that and this and other
for the mere music of our voices
all your endless golden afternoon
—from The Only Empty Place, by Richard Lehnert
(Patterson Street Press, 2023)
Reprinted with permission from the author
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