‘If You Are over Staying Woke’
— Joyce Chong
Wilt the news
White the hydrangeas
Drink the white
Especially now, when things are more difficult than anticipated, we need the mundane, the simple and the quietly beautiful. Especially now, when it’s easy to get lost in a slurry of bad news, of dread and fear. We need the routine, we need the reminders to return to ourselves. This poem is a self-care poem, a meditation on moving onwards despite / to spite / in spite. It’s about finding your own little enclave of normal within the world, without forgetting about it all. It’s about grief and exhaustion and hope, and treasuring the dull moments when they become hard to find.
The transitions in this poem move beautifully from one image to another, one thought, one reminder, overlapping and circling and cycling and tripping over itself until you find yourself at its stilling end. It’s a reminder, that you don’t always have to be hurting, to be worried. It’s a reminder to yourself to “be honest / when you’re up / to it”.