November 8
SLAYING OLD DRAGONS
Your roar is Doppler-low and I can feel my steps move the earth as I go forward. Former dominator, scary from every angle, I come for you today. The scales are falling. I don’t rip them but they fall. I can breathe at the heights of your lair; I am not shrinking. The booming voice you had is gone, the power spilling away from you. I don’t fly from you. Gone is the tremble you once instilled. The curtain has parted and you are revealed not as the dragon, the serpent, the monster but as the peacock you have always been, preening and screeching as ever.
Put your foot down and dance with the other.
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Come What May
Inevitable things are very much like inedible things;
you can’t quite swallow them yet they are hard to throw up.
It can’t seem to get here quick enough to comfort my fear
nor will it pass with any speed once it has arrived.
I am like a boa with a hedgehog as my lunch,
the shredding is rightfully dreaded and in no way preventable.
Not everything that wings my way is anxiety driven,
but I have to admit that some things are.
I cannot spend my days wishing the storm clouds away
so I will put on my slicker and hunker down for the drenching.
You are reading selections from Sober on the Way to Sane and More Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault
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