24 Carat Star Time

I can’t even begin to write about what I feel or what I am experiencing right now. I think of one of my favorite poems, Stevie Smith’s Not Waving but Drowning, more often than I care to to describe the insurmountable feeling of being sucked in by the waves and pulled to the bottom.

I don’t know how this will end. I find myself feeling beat down – and simply, starkly terrified – and without hope more and more.

But sometime serendipity happens. I was reading a blog I discovered today and found a women of great courage and compassion going through something much worse than I am. She ended her entry with a poem. As I read from line to line I quickly recognized it, counted happening upon it today a great blessing, and would – in turn – like to also share it with you.

Invictus

by William Ernest Henley; 1849-1903

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.