The Sunday Paws: #10

William Bronk's "The Mind's Landscape on an Early Winter Day"

Sep 08, 2024

August has gone. September has come. I anticipated that I would resume writing a weekly post by this time. Now, I cannot help but laugh at that bit of anticipation.

If you missed it, I contributed a Q&A to Sober.com’s Sober App Substack. A special Thank you! to

Dana Leigh Lyons

for the invitation and for allowing me an indefinite deadline. I enjoyed responding to the questions and was reminded of how frustrating I find word limits.

Speaking of sobriety …

Among the many sayings that fill the rooms of recovery is this one:

We make plans—and God laughs.

When I hear or call it to mind, I cannot help but wonder how God laughs when observing us planning for this or that. For no reason other than what I prefer, I assume God’s laugh is kind and arises from a certain understanding. That assumption helps ease the frustration, whelmed feelings, and occasional upset that I experience while I remain in transition. And though I cannot tell you what this sort of laugh is, I can identify it when I hear and see it. Sometimes, the seeing is more important than the hearing.

What might this kind laugh that arises from a certain understanding look like? I gestured in its direction when offering some thoughts in transition in Waves. Specifically, I wrote of

the sort of understanding that is expressed in the slight nod of the head while listening to someone share their struggle, graced by a soft smile that sits below gentle eyes, which see straight to the heart of things: that there is change and there is suffering; that, at times, this is frustrating and overwhelming and upsetting whether we are in the center of it or somewhere toward the periphery; that it will pass if we let it; and that we can support others who are in caught in the throws of it, too.

As I (re)read these words, I feel that I can say a bit more. But I will hold off. Right now, I need to pause and rest.

Below are two pictures of Wilbur, who has found a new perch in his new home, along with a poem from William Bronk titled “The Mind’s Landscape on an Early Winter Day.” Enjoy—and please find time to pause this Sunday and throughout the week. Use Wilbur as a model if you need one.

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Seeds and survivals are scattered in all the flaws
of this raw day, even though these are perceived
by being unperceived, until the mind
tugs at the senses to remind them. The mind says see.
What the senses feel is the sharp immediate air
and all this scene half emptied, opened out
to admit the light, the thin, slight light.
What the senses feel is loss, and not less loss
for being neither final nor complete.
The senses and the mind agree it seldom is.

For loss is what we live with all the time.
None knows this better than the mind should know, the mind
that wanders, and cannot tell our name, itself
all seeds and survivals, little else, poor blind.
The mind is always lost and gropes its way,—
lost, even when the senses seize the world
and feed as though there never could be loss.
It is this winter mind, the ne'erdowell
that never finds a plan, that tells us see.
And we open our eyes and feel our way in the dark.

You can find “The Mind’s Landscape on an Early Winter Day” by William Bronk in the collection Light And Dark.