mental health day {10/11/23}

Evidently yesterday was World Mental Health Day. I missed the memo, so I celebrated today by doing…nothing. Here’s a poem I wrote about it:

Instructions for Resurrection

Go back to bed
after you drop the kids off at school.
Scroll on your phone
for a while, then
put it down.
Close your eyes.
Be nothing
until noon.

Take a hot shower.

Eat lunch.

Go outside.
Shake a blanket open over the grass
next to the wildflowers you sprinkled
from seed packets last spring,
the ones that took so long to grow
you were sure they’d never come.

Watch the bees
scavenge the goldenrod
for late season nectar.

Think about what you will gather
for winter.

Lay on your back in the sun.
Start playing a podcast
then stop.
Listen to the birds
the crickets
the dogs
the neighbors on their walks.

Watch the clouds,
the dragonflies circling the cloud of midges.

Take off your jacket.
Take off your socks.

The stalk of the sunflower bows,
seeds spent. Remember
the seeds you planted in the garden last week,
how they will wait under the soil,
under the snow.

Perhaps you will see them in spring.

It is hot in the sun
but stay out a few minutes longer, stay
out as long as you possibly can
Stay
and listen to the world sing.