These things are mine

These things are mine

Planting flowers
watching a heron
talking to children far away

listening to blackbirds
walking the meadow
counting the deer tracks in damp clay

gazing at clouds peony pink
after the storm beneath the soft rain
building a shelter to start life again

these things are mine
like the beat of your heart
though the wind’s in the east and the world falls apart.

Published by

Jane Dougherty

I used to do lots of things I didn't much enjoy. Now I am officially a writer. It's what I always wanted to be.

27 thoughts on “These things are mine”

    1. I tell myself I’m lucky to have the intellectual tools to make do with little in terms of material comforts. Then I ask myself, do you really need to be a genius to see that a tree is more important than a garden table, a nest of robins more beautiful than a shaved lawn?

      Reply

      1. We are brainwashed from a young age about what we “need”, and have to rewash our brains with very little support in most cases. People got by on so much less during the last two years, but now they’re back to their normal overconsuming selves.

      2. The dependence on gadgetry is frightening. None of us understands it, couldn’t mend it never mind make it. Stuff that uses materials plundered from the earth’s entrails by exploited miners in countries seething with resentment. The awful thing is that even if we are faced with the facts behind the toys we play with, most would shrug and say, they’re essentials. There’s no compassion, no sense of responsibility. We just go with the flow.

      3. Sometimes we fight the tides, but we get tired. We lived very well without computers or cell phones for a long time–in our lifetimes, in fact–yet it would be hard now to reject them.

      4. You can’t get cash from the bank without a card, can’t fill in tax forms, can’t book train tickets or (in rural areas) see a doctor without an internet connection. And we’re supposed to be thrilled at the idea of having a fridge that tells you when packages are past their sell-by, when the central heating turns itself on/up/off, the lights. Nobody uses maps anymore, they ask their car to tell them where they are and which route to take. Technology is insidiously taking over our lives, disconnecting them from reality.

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