May's Theme: The Turning Wheel

And how we respond to it

The theme I’ll be sticking to for the month of May is: The Turning Wheel.

The turning wheel is a moment, a circumstance, or a season that might feel chaotic, or unfair or where we don’t like what’s happening, but there isn’t anything tangible we can do about it…

It’s uncertainty, it’s endings, it’s when we feel like we desperately have to figure it all out.

I’m currently in one of those seasons.

Historically, I would spend all my time, energy, thoughts, and conversations trying to grip and control that wheel of uncertainty.

Presently, I’m trying to change that. 

I’m seeing what it’s like when I stay in the center. 

Lindsay Mack, a wonderful teacher of Tarot, explains what this means in her podcast episode about The Wheel of Fortune card: 

Staying in our center can be super uncomfortable, but it’s actually less uncomfortable than trying to grip and control. If you are busy trying to grip and control and figure out what’s coming next, then it becomes all about the bumps.

Staying in the center means you start with what’s immediately in front of you. The day-to-day. You are open to whatever wants to arise, and you are tending to what needs your attention. You are chopping wood and carrying water. You are being in your life.

There is only the present moment of your life.

The Turning Wheel | Mixed Media Collage by Colleen Kam Siu | 8.5” x 8.5”

The poem of the week is: “The Turning Wheel”

Everything within me
wants to know:

The time
The place
The state
The weather 
The plan
The way
I should act
to ensure nothing
ever goes up in flames
(again)

Everything within me
says it knows: 

nothing will turn out 
if I don’t monitor every moment 
and every moment 
around it…
I’m just trying to turn the wheel 
around, 
to click different feelings
into space,
to direct a change, 
to make a right turn 
into fate.

But I’m tired of all this forward & backward
tired of being jostled about
by turbo speeds & clumsy reversals 
and gravity keeps pulling
all of my moments back down 
to the ground. 

So, finally I say:

OKAY! Okay. 

And I go inward, 
to the still hub of the turning wheel,
where time is not an ailment
where nothing will move me -
a place where I can be
like a bear in her cave
who knows the weather
is not against her,

It just is and it will be. 

I sit and let everything
creak around me, 
every moment a wave
every breath a cloud 
every pulse a yes, this too.
I sit until the sun rises
inside my chest
and flowers start to grow
out of my brain.

Everything within me
sees it now: 

Slowness is a gift,
like the lollygagging lift of my eyelids 
every morning
like waiting for coffee
to fill the largest cup I own 
bit-by-bit,
like unrushed red buds 
at the end of a cold-spring maple,
a burgeoning reminder:

I am right where I need to be. 

There is nothing
	I should be doing
And nothing
	left undone

right now, 
the only thing that needs me
is this poem,
slowly unfolding.