Practicing

Here’s me practicing again,

and my piano practice is rough.

Maybe because it’s plagued

with the same thing that slowed

my other practice, in times past —

a sense I’d done enough, I shouldn’t

have to — it should come to me

by now — it’s come to others —

surely by now I’ve worked

as much as they …

Here’s me applying a lesson

to myself: as with that practice,

so with this — it takes immersion.

It takes abandoning, entirely,

thoughts of time and measurement.

It takes the humbleness

to be the instrument

of what is coming through …

If I can do it there,

well, the question is,

am I willing to do it here?

©Wendy Mulhern

December 14, 2019