Sundays seem to sap my energy and motivation. I don't really want to do anything else today, now that my grass is shorn down to an acceptable length. I'm hungry and a little thirsty. Maybe, later, I will take my dog for a walk, but maybe I won't. That's just the kind of mood I'm in.
Perhaps this lethargy is a holdover from the days when doing anything on the sabbath was a sin. Even Christ was charged with working on the sabbath. He healed people, cast out demons, let his disciples pick wheat to eat on the seventh day. Me? I usually reserve Sundays for things that I just can't do any other day of the week--like mowing the lawn or cleaning the house or writing a new poem. And preparing my myself for the upcoming work week.
This evening, I will be lucky if I make it to 10 p.m. In fact, a nap on the couch sounds pretty good right now. Since the pandemic began, I have noticed that the pace of my days has slowed considerably, allowing for things like naps without experiencing guilt.
Or maybe I will take my dog for a walk, and then take a nap. The possibilities are endless as evening stretches into the miracle of night.
And for that, Saint Marty gives thanks.
poem from Kyrie
by: Ellen Bryant Voigt
After I'd seen my children truly ill,
I had no need to dream that they were ill
nor in any other way imperiled--
no more babies pitching down the well,
no more watching from shore as my boy rolls
like a kicked stone from the raft, meanwhile
Kate with a handful of bees--
when I was a girl,
I practiced in the attic with my dolls,
but Del went out of right mind, his fingernails
turned blue, and Kate--no child should lie so still,
her small excitable body held enthralled. . . .
After that, in order to make it real
I dreamed them whole.
