Discouragement
hangs on me heavy
like chain mail.
At times it seems my progress
on the spiritual path
is slime trailing a snail.

The landslide:
my moment of pettiness,
cursing myself for knocking the vase,
forgetting that guy's name,
not getting her flowers
BEFORE her thinly veiled hint.

Maybe not so much a landslide
as a desert
so wide, it seems endless.
How can I cross it?
Will my horses pull this old wagon
the distance?
All I can see on the far horizon
is mountains,
high - even from here.

And dragging behind me
on the chain of my memory
a thousand soiled volumes
containing the history
of too much
beer, fried chicken,
naughty and mean imaginings,
and cuckoo condemnations
of those who dared to wrong me.

But discouragement is the enemy
hiding behind
and under
the fiction
of perfection.

04/06/2012

Author's Note: This poem is meant to be a companion to "Practice."

Posted on 04/06/2012
Copyright © 2025 Glenn Currier