A couple months ago, I took to the hermitage Eve Ewing’s Electric Arches and Joyce Rupp’s My Soul Feels Lean, two collections of poetry. I commend both to you.

With Ewing’s collection, I found myself relating to a new-to-me voice whose poetry revisited the streets and experiences of Chicago, along with the lovely images and scenes of blackness that she wisely integrated. A sociologist of education, Ewing may be my Chicago poet, after Professor Gwendolyn Brooks.

I’ve read Rupp’s book a few times, especially at transitional moments where loss, grief, love, and potential are at the tips of my fingers. If you want to read either of them, you should!

Of the many things I could pass onto you, here’s the one from Joyce Rupp that may open you to your own inquiry:

You Wonder

You wonder

why you take those daily

steps, pushing

to get your work done,

to conform to a schedule

beyond accomplishment.

You wonder

when you end each day

with the discomfort

of not making the mark,

leaving much undone, unsaid,

unloved, unresolved.

You wonder

how you could miss

those moments of friendship,

those invitations to compassion,

those connections to a world

not of your making.

You wonder

if you could live differently,

more in tune with your true self,

more in step with your deepest desires,

more in love with cosmic beauty,

more in sync with the world’s desolate.

You wonder,

but then you continue forward

on the same old trek of dull

repetition, karmic garbage,

and sludgy unawareness.