Old Beauty

Surviving long, rainy, winter nights is 
much easier than surviving long, dark 
years of complacency. The ways I bent

my mind in order to comply to what 
I thought others expected of me left 
almost permanent contortions. The bent 
 
twig of my thinking grew to what it thought 
was its own reality. Change did not 
come with the season but with the reason:

Tonight/today, I count it a privilege 
to walk the consequences of my lost 
choices because I am learning the Grand

Canyon way of acceptance--my cuts have 
turned into deep gorges of old beauty.