Too Tired for a Challenge Today. Let's Rest Instead.
I've held a poem close for weeks and was thinking of sharing it today. It hung in my poem box out by the street all summer long. Now the faded copy sits on my art table, waiting. I read it now and then, recognizing in its fresh phrases the familiar, compelling challenge. I think, “Oh, that's so good!”
I went to find the poet's website where the poem first appeared, so I could properly cite this challenging poem. But then I found her blog, “Poem A Day”, and I slid happily down the rabbit hole from poem to poem to poem until I came to the poem, “At Last”.
Reading its short lines, I released a deeper breath, feeling my shoulders drop.
Today, I realized, I am too tired for a challenge. I've used up all my challenge energy this week…on stage speaking to 600, in a workshop with a group of learners, in a meeting with a Board of Directors, coaching them through the doorway of an anxious transition.
Then I think of you, and I wonder if perhaps your challenge energy has run dry, too? If, whenever you read this, you might need something else instead.
There'll be plenty of time for more challenge in the days ahead. But for today, I invite you to lean with me into the rest and acceptance of this poem, with thanks to the author.
September 21, 2025
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
after years of bowing
at the altar of not-good-enough,
I turn toward the rest
of the world and fall in love
with what is here
Poem from: www.AHundredFallingVeils.com/2025/09/21/at-last-2/
Photo from the Cottonwood Forest, Tamaya, New Mexico, September 2025, Renee Smith.
