“Every mountain top is within reach if you just keep climbing.”
―
Photo taken near Haines, Alaska
Tag: motivation
Foto Friday #14
That’s the way, Sweetheart! Always strive to “bridge the gap which exists between where you are now and the goal you intend to reach”!
Photo taken at Night Hawk Winery, Paola, Kansas. Quote by Earl Nightingale
A Box of Dreams
In the sluggish haze of morning I notice a door
which I cautiously approach and find is open.
I pause but can’t resist crossing the threshold.
Ignoring the lump in my throat,
I toss apprehension aside and begin to explore.
I sense I may have already been here,
in another time, another space, another “me”.
Soon I realize this is where I
neatly folded my dreams and packed them away,
finding them easier to forget than to pursue.
I gather my empty hopes and lost ambitions
then tuck them, one by one, into a box I once discarded
by the door. I think how fortunate it is that I stumbled
across them now, at this very moment,
when I need them the most.
I pass back through the door with my box of dreams,
a prized possession I clutch tightly to my chest.
A creak of the door tells me it has closed behind me.
A click of the lock suggests I’ll never be going back.
There is no need—I found my dreams!
This poem “A Box of Dreams” is featured on vox poetica today.
Thank you, vox poetica!
The Thrill is Gone
My affair with coffee started in earnest during my working years. As an accountant, I was married to my desk. My computer and I could finish each other’s sentences. Week days were nothing but debits and credits and budgets, oh my!
To divert the monotony, I began to visit the break-room for coffee. One cup became two, two became three – you see where this is going? It used to be just a morning thing, then I decided why not drink coffee all day long? To make the infatuation even worse, my place of employment installed one of those fancy little machines where you could make whatever flavor you wanted! Mocha, Hazelnut, and Butter Pecan were my favorites! When I retired nearly five years ago, I’m sure the line item amount budgeted for coffee was significantly reduced.
Retirement came with considerable changes in routine, but the amount of coffee I drank was not one of them. I still spent hours on the computer, but instead of plugging numbers into spreadsheets, I would string words together to make a story or a poem. Coffee continued to be a reason to get up, take a break and refocus. My affair with coffee lived on!
Soon, I began to rely on coffee to co-author my writing. Some mornings, words awoke with the first cup and sometimes they didn’t appear until after the third. I was convinced there was a direct connection between the number of paragraphs on the page and the amount of coffee I consumed. I remember one chilly morning trying to come up with just the perfect word to fill the void in a poem I was working on. I struggled to find a compromise between the expected word and one with an abstract meaning. I lifted my cup and there it was, mingled in the black liquid magic! The perfect word! Would I have found it were it not for coffee?
Unfortunately, coffee and I will have to part ways! On a completely innocent visit to my doctor, he discovered the truth about my romance with caffeine. For assorted reasons, he suggested I drastically ease my fling with coffee or he wouldn’t allow it at all! Imagine my grief!
The good news is that we don’t have to break-up completely, coffee and me. We can still see each other two times a day. But now, when I go into the kitchen to drain the pot; when the last drop of motivation is in my cup, I wonder where I’ll find the words if they don’t show up before the cup is empty!
My response to today’s one-word prompt: Sympathy (because it is with great sympathy that I end my affair with coffee!)
A Purpose
We carelessly squander
and aimlessly ponder
the significance of life
as it passes us by.
With scant concentration
and meek motivation,
we search for fulfillment
but find nothing there.
What good are our choices,
our vision, our voices,
if we don’t use them;
but lock them away?
A purpose! That’s the key
to joy and sanity
or darkness swoops in
and the sun doesn’t shine!
That’s why I write…I’m a little afraid of the dark!
