Resilience
I was just a piece of paper on a desk,
blank and waiting for the ink-scars to dry
A gust knocked me off, I spiraled, fell,
landed on a Bukowski poem and stories of office kissing chaos.
The cleaning crew even dumped us,
Inside recycling bins we met The Rum Diary,
Hunter’s ghosts mixed with mine.
In the back of a truck,
we joined a thousand paper lives,
half-written notes, guilty pleasure receipts,
paper planes from Dublin to Detroit.
Felt the muscle of existence,
The grit, grind and weight of every story,
whipping fear into submission.
The journey from umbilical cord
to last breath.
Transforming tears and touch, and every spill of coffee into a worn and tarnished work of art, never quite complete.
In every recycled pile of randomness
we found connection,
Bukowski’s brutal honesty,
Hunter’s wild search for meaning,
mundane records, whimsical flights,
proof we were here.
Pieces of a puzzle called, resilience.
To become resilient is to embrace the ride,
see beyond the immediate storm,
reflect on the scars and whispers of wisdom.
To find out enlightenment is a space between fragility and strength
No more than a ball cap, flipped and worn.
Mental callus doesn’t come in a day.
It’s born from trials, falls, and the muddled reflections in midnight whiskey.
Staggering but eventually standing firm amid life’s gusts,
knowing each fall is a rise, a rebirth.
Among the papers, I learned
the art of turning fragility into armor.
Shaping the journey of imperfection and somehow arriving totally unfazed.
Happy I ignored the doubters from 30 years ago that are now all dead.
Resilience—
is becoming
Evolving from a drifting scrap into a grounded whole.
Through time, experience, reflection,
we find our place, our strength, yes. our resilience.
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