ELOGOS Word Food by Deb

Full Stop by debgrant

In the midst of the full stop
that the trajectory of our lives
has experienced 
in these corona days,

Do I have any body
soul
calendar 
memory of anything 
that feels like a full stop?

More recently,
the days after the end of
a career.
The routine of office days,
Sundays,
Holy Days
over.
The label of my profession
shelved 
leaving a vacuum of questions
mostly a reborn woman child 
asking Who am I?
Who am I now?

But these plague days feel more like
the time I was riding a friend's horse
alone through a pasture.
A gentle walk urged into
an easy lope,
urged into a gallop.
The ecstasy of wind created,
a powerful creature, warm
and thrumming percussion section
of human, horse, and earth.

And then the horse stopped.

I don't know why. 
He just stopped.
I did not.
I experienced the trite but true metaphor
of head over heals. 
It was an Olympic moment of movement
Speed and form.
And then I stuck the landing
or it stuck me. 
Not a breath left in my lungs
to make a noise. 
Shock, then pain, 
then feeling the leather rein still wrapped in my fingers.
Then seeing the rock my back missed 
when I landed. 
The rock that would have cracked me dead or lame.

Today it isn't a story of being grateful to be alive
or even getting back on the horse that threw me
which I did perhaps because I love a metaphor.

Today it is a story about how difficult it is to stop
when it wasn't our choice to stop. 
Learning how to stop may be 
how we survive. 

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