One of the reasons I love the Season of Advent so much is because it makes space for our real lives. It isn’t about decorations or celebrating, but about waiting, longing and then welcoming. Advent can be all work, or no work, but it helps me to have courage to be open, receptive.

In a season of stress this doesn’t come easily, the reflex is to be cautious, and maybe self protective. It takes intention to reach past that — Advent as a discipline reaches past to what’s coming. So, when I write for pleasure, it reaches past the stuff that needs to be done and makes space, looses those tight postures. What does that for you? What are you reaching for this Advent?

Flotsam

I write like an octopus
wedged in the space between
ideas and deadlines, deep
in a sea of imagination.

Two tentacles scribble furtively
while three others tap diffidently,
worrying a pencil, a tablet, a keyboard.
Two more stretch, awkwardly
to work out the cramps and smooth
the knots that bunch up in the crease
where my head flops over my
three hearts that beat for Thee,
for thee, and family…

‘finished’ pieces collect around
the last tentacle, which lays
sleeping in the middle of the day
because it wrote through
to the rising of the sun.

When I’m brave, I let one go
like a bit of flotsam,
words in a bottle
that wash ashore,
to be found maybe —
and read by you.

© 2020 Laurel Archer (all rights reserved)