Posted on by Tenneson Woolf

Crossing Over

There is a kind of poetry contest happening on the Open Space listserve, now through June 21st. My friend Jeff Aitken is inviting it. It’s an annual thing. It’s playful and serious. It names a Poet Laureate each year.

I saw the announcement for the theme yesterday. It is Crossing Over, and was invitation to express a moment of crossing over from one understanding to another. This is, after all, often what is accomplished in the process of Open Space Technology.

The rules were simple. No more than 33 words. Can be any form. Rhymes or not. Doesn’t have to be a direct experience from Open Space.

I couldn’t help myself. I wanted in! I let it come out of me, really in one breath. Then edited slightly. I’ve seen this kind of pain, and thankfully, crossing over, in myself, in individuals, and in groups of people working together.

Here’s what I came up with.

It was obvious there was pain. 
Feelings hurt. Wounds infected. 
Hopes, dwindling relentlessly over the horizon called “not today.”
It was the story underneath, finally excavated,
that began to change everything.

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