I don’t know whether I want to write commentary on my poems, but I am trying it out here.

This week I have noticed that lots of old routines and facets of my life are changing or disintegrating.  I am back to writing my book after a long time away with my business work, my colleague is on maternity leave, my favourite café is no longer home, some friends are moving, some are in new relationships, and I have been trying to write daily for extraplorer, which has caused its own twenty-first century vertigo,  even my hairdresser might be changing.

Everyday this week I have felt disorientated.  I wake up, and can’t quite pin down who I am.  I am having to train myself back into the routines that serve as anchors to my everyday life.  Sometimes I forget the things that create stability or peace or connection and productivity and it’s like I have to reinvent or rediscover them.

I love the phrase ‘ontological lightness’; it means a kind of insubstantiality of being.  This week I have felt insipid, more of a breeze than a person, tipped about by circumstances.

But really this is only partial reality.  It’s more in my head than in my legs.  If I stay still for a few minutes, like right now, essence of me starts to fill up and I feel like myself again.

It’s the essence of me that is linked to the essence of the old oak in the poem ‘falling’.  Leaves falling have an ontological lightness; they will decay and fade, but the inner reality of the tree, and the reality of the acorns which although perhaps not visible to the tree do exist in the world, are full of substance.  Very full, and overflowing with life, which will become again visible through the buds of spring.

So once again, patience.