Grrrrrr!

 It is New Year's Eve, and I should probably be writing something profound and celebratory. But I've been struggling with anger for several days, and when I tried to write a nice poem for my poetry group last night, all I could manage to write about was anger. Hmm. Even though it's not an emotion that we often welcome, it may be a common one for us living through the past year. So I'll paste my anger poem below, with the hope that as we enter 2026, there will be hope that things get less bad, that we'll feel more hope than frustration, and that we'll take a turn for the better. Fingers crossed.....

GRRRR!

My mother always told me

I was hiding behind the door

when they passed the patience out.

She told me this, of course,

when I really wanted things to

move along more quickly.

Then I read that folks like me

who were born under the

sign of Gemini had little patience.

So I had an excuse!

But the book didn’t say how angry

I was capable of getting.

These days my anger is very alive.

There are the small things:

Like spilling the tea all over the rug,

Or tripping over the garden hose,

Or getting to the car without my keys.

Those things are not so bad.

But big anger sometimes plagues me:

The immoral men taking over our government,

Or capitalism drowning out kindness,

Or immigrants treated like villains,

Beautiful black and brown folks being ostracized,

Scams polluting our phones and computers.

I try to open my mind to meditate on trees,

Or rolling green pastures, or wild geese flying,

baby penguins, loving relationships.

Yet big angers are always waiting to be triggered.

Well, this is to firmly say that I’ve had enough!

I am planting my focus on the beautiful, not the ugly!

Amen.