The Tide Comes Back

Sí, la marea me ha regresado,

¿Sabes tú por qué?

Porque quería, y yo la quería

Y un día así fue

Yes, the tide has returned to me-

Do you know why?

Because it wanted to, and I wanted it

And so it was, one day

If you have not yet discovered this about Gather, there is a circle of poets here who publish and read and comment on each other's work in such a way that it pulls people like me into their circle gradually, moving from timid comments to finally publishing and receiving the wisdom of that circle. 

I took most of the summer off from Gather because I was busy on our farm, but also because I was weary of trying to find a place where I felt I fit in on Gather.  I came back near the end of July after achieving a victory over myself and I put aside being bothered by having few readers; I simply worked to do a better, more thoughtful job of commenting on the work of others and wrote my own articles when I had deep inspiration.

As I prepared to go back to teaching school, I frantically tried to finish summer projects like a big fencing system that took me out into tall grass every day-I struggled to sleep each night from the inevitable chigger bites.  After almost two years, deer found out that they could force their way into our garden and stripped the foliage off nearly all our young fruit trees, which took an emergency electric fence to repair.  With temperatures near 100 each day, it was a struggle to be calm enough to think about other people's work, especially complex poetry, but I kept working at it, working through the miserable parts of life.

So school began and I passed through the early jitters and several outbreaks of fear amongst my students, and I found myself calmer and more masterful than I had ever been in my classes.  I was beginning to contemplate this when two days ago I realized that my articles with four, five or six comments were steadily growing longer threads as friends dropped by, as new friends found me.  For one moment, I had this enormous physical sensation of watery energy rushing over and through me, and that little piece of Spanish dropped into my head.

If you have not yet found the feeling of belonging to the Gather community which you hoped for when you signed on, I wish you hope and perseverance.  I believe I finally have and I believe that this same sweet feeling will come, with time, to you.