They didn’t think they wanted to get up,
absorbed, as they were, in arranging
the little curlicues of what they called their lives

Which always seemed to promise:
Sometime, somehow, they’d get it right
and win the prize of fortune, fame, delight

They thought it was annoying to be prodded,
even unfair, as it perhaps distracted
them off their game, made them miss their win,
plus it was fearsome to be demanded
to be more than they had ever been

And yet, when they finally awoke.
They had no more words to describe.
The things that looked like onerous demands
were simply invitations to arise,
to inhabit the vast regions of their being,
to humbly wield their quintessential power.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 28, 2020