Finding the Honest Word
What interests me are the skyward tips of the branches and the chapters we haven’t written yet.
Journal Collage Poem #2
February
As I edit this poem, I can see out my window the same “silhouettes of winter trees” and clumps of squirrel nests between the branches. They’ve come full circle through the seasons, yet they seem unchanged. Of course, if I were paying closer attention, I’d see the micro changes they’ve undergone. Surely the nests are not made of the same leaves I saw a year ago. The branches have grown longer. Some have broken off and new ones have emerged.
As for me, I’m not noticeably different either. I’m still looking for “the honest word,” and trusting the “warmth and light and life” to keep me warm.
But this project and my daily journaling help me keep a record of the invisible changes. Not a perfect record, sure. And that’s OK. The point is to be intentional about where I give my attention, as often as possible, and to minimize the time I spend sleepwalking through my life. If I can do that, even by only a few minutes a day, I consider it worthwhile.
The first lines strike a much different chord for me now than when I wrote them last winter. Back then, I was making a light-hearted observation about our sleep schedules—Bill is a night owl, and I’m an early bird. I had no idea I would almost lose him to Pulmonary Embolism just a few months later.
He’s doing great now, and we’ve settled back into business as usual. But for a while, we lived in a kind of perpetual and fierce gratitude. Whenever he came late to bed, I’d wake at the sounds, the sensations, the warmth and weight of him lying next to me. I found myself reaching for him—to hold his hand, or run my finger down the center of his chest—always with the same prayer running through me: thank you, thank you, thank you.
These changes aren’t visible. And without this imperfect record, I might not give them much thought. But sitting here, attending to these memories, I feel a touch of that same fierce gratitude again.
February Sometimes I wake up and you haven’t come to bed yet. I’m touching you to know you’re there, finding the honest word—the truth as you see it Among the silhouettes of winter trees, thick clumps of squirrel's nests tucked between the bare-black limbs. What interests me, though, are the skyward tips of the branches And the chapters we haven’t written yet: Gray skies. Blue skies. Midnight black skies and the stars they reveal. The older they get the less they care what people think. And what waits for you is endless sleep, obscurity. A chill to set your bones. But love is a constant And all around us is warmth and light and life— The echoes of our many loves.
If you’re new to the 2024 Journal Collage series, here’s some background:
Before I started making plans and setting goals for 2025, I wanted to pause and reflect on the outgoing year. In the past, when I tried to do this type of end-of-year reflection, I didn’t get very far. I need structure and boundaries around the idea or it becomes overwhelming.
So, I thought I’d try something new: create a collage poem from my 2024 journal entries. The experiment resulted in a whole series of collage poems, each representing a month of the year, which I plan to post throughout 2025.
If you’re curious (or want to give it a try), here’s what I did:
I read every journal entry from January 1 to December 31, 2024.
As I went, I highlighted all the lines that seemed alive/interesting/electric (being careful not to overthink or re-read).
Pasted the highlighted lines into a Google doc and grouped them according to the seasons (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall) in which they appear in the journal.
Started editing
The only “rules” I gave myself were:
I couldn’t add any new lines that didn’t already exist in my journal. I did allow myself to edit existing lines, but only by cutting words or adding conjunctions (“And,” “Because”, etc.)
Each poem could only contain lines from the season (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall) in which those lines appear in the journal.