STIRRING
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
WILLIAM JAMES
You do not have to be at your worst. It is not a prerequisite
that you find the apogee of your own annihilation,
or be standing with one foot already off the ledge,
the other gripping the precipice with its toes. You are
not obliged to have already committed to the leap. Even if
all you are in this moment is the swan still contemplating
the dive, if you are the engine hovering at the crest
of a downward pass, if the brake lines have not failed completely,
but are beginning the slow leak of air, pressure
falling at a measured & predictable rate, it is enough
to be aware that gravity has begun conspiring
against you. It is enough to want to stop before the catastrophe,
to defer the cataclysm. You needn’t have tattooed the chain link
directly on your throat as long as you can recognize
the lengthening shadow of the rope. Why should you be made
to wait until you have lost the opening battle
before it is permissible to call for aid? An appeal
for reinforcement does not make you a burden,
a strain on limited resources. It’s okay if despair is
an intermediate stop rather than a terminus – despair is still
despair, & there is nobility in the quest to find a path
around it, rather than through. Yes, there is darkness today,
there may well be more of the same darkness tomorrow;
further still, to feel the absence of gloom may seem an impossibility
from here. You still do not have to wait for the sun
to extinguish itself before demanding proof of light.
You do not have to crawl on your knees through broken shards
of eternity to have earned the right to ask for grace. Look,
another storm is coming,
& in its wake, a break in the clouds.
william james is originally from rural western Pennsylvania, but now calls New Hampshire home. They are the author of "rebel hearts & restless ghosts" (2016) and "If I Forget Thee Lowcountry" (2021); individual poems have been published in South Carolina Review, The Northeast Coast, Asterales, Forklift OH, The Shore, Stirring, and elsewhere.
