The Clearing

A poetic invitation to ease

I’d like to take a step back from what I’ve been writing on, and take a moment to pause. Not a pause from my topic, but an invitation for you to pause.

I want to share with you a poem I wrote around four years ago, at a place quite special to me, called ‘The Clearing’. It’s aptly named, as it’s been a place where I’ve been able to pause and clear some of my worries and fussings away, even if only for a time.

I’ll add some thoughts below the poem, but before you read these I invite you to pause, breathe, and just read the poem slowly. Perhaps imagine you’re in a place from your own memory that reminds you of a place or time of tranquility. Remember the sounds and smells, and allow yourself to rest in that place in your memory. An invitation to ease.

When I became self-employed six years ago, I made a conscious decision to block out a day a month in my calendar to get away and declutter my busy head. One of my favourite places was Maungatautari’s Sanctuary Mountain, a predator-fenced inland island sanctuary — a fully fenced mountain. It’s now home to many indigenous species of birds and reptiles, some that had been extinct on mainland New Zealand for decades. For a lover of solitude and Aotearoa’s outdoors like me, it is a sanctuary.

In the middle of one of the smaller sub-enclosures is a spot called The Clearing. It’s a great place for solitude, reflection, or just switching off and taking in all the smells, sounds, and cool, damp air under the tall forest canopy. It’s a feeding spot for Kākā, one of Aotearoa’s native parrot species. So even when I’m there alone, I’m never actually alone — whether they’re simply observing me from the treetops or coming down and sitting next to me.

Clearing can be a noun or a verb. I wrote this poem in The Clearing, but it’s also a metaphor for the practice of clearing: taking a deliberate pause to get out of my own head — my worries, fixations, and well-worn mental paths — and just notice the deeper things within me. Observing the way my mind spins around, what it keeps spinning back to, and putting all of that to one side for a moment to be mindful of simpler things: the feel of the cool air under the forest canopy, the sounds of the many different birds near and far, the smell of the damp, rotting leaves in the undergrowth.

You don’t have to go to The Clearing to do this, though. You can perhaps find a short moment in your day-to-day — sitting with your coffee and just smelling it, listening to what’s outside, near and far. Turning up slightly early to that appointment, switching off the car and just sitting, noticing your breath, perhaps slowing it a little. Easing.

Easing isn’t necessarily easy; it’s often the opposite. I now struggle to reach a point of ease or rest — a consequence of my injury and the pain disorder I now live with as a result. I drove back to The Clearing last week for the first time in a while, an attempt to sit and pause where I used to, where I wrote this poem four years ago. I found there was a school group there — over thirty excited kids with their teachers and parents. It’s funny; even when I am alone, it often feels like there’s a bunch of excited children running around in my distractible head. Or the pain in my arm like a screeching parrot. Like the gates back to that place and time of ease in my memory are locked; a season long gone.

But I’m learning that it’s not actually reaching that place of tranquillity that really matters; it’s being deliberate about taking the time and effort to turn up and practise that stillness again, even when it feels pointless, like I can no longer get there. It’s not about reaching some magical zen, mystical place. That’s why they call it a practice.

This is a season, and it’s unlike the previous one. And like all seasons, this one too will pass. There’s hope in that, I guess, but the invitation is to pause from looking ahead and yearning for a better day. We never know what’s ahead — what tomorrow may or may not bring — but this, right here and now, this moment, is real. Accepting this moment and all it brings, the good and the painful — this being alive — it is good. It is beautiful, in its own way.

There’s still this childlike self within us all that has the capacity to step back and observe the simplest things with wonder. The sounds and colours of birds in the trees. The feel of gloop or sand in our fingers or on our cheeks. We don’t so much get older; we just get busier — busier doing all the things we’re supposed to do in the societies we live in. Those things are important; they help us survive. But that childlike wonder, that free-form creativity that splashes vivid colours on the page and doesn’t care much about staying inside the lines or about what others think — we need that too. That’s what makes us unique.

I encourage you to practise the pause. Find whatever time you can manage, and just pause. Smell the smells, hear the sounds near and far. Notice your breath. Slow down, just a little. Try to ease your jaw, your shoulders, your brow, your glutes. Ease, just a little. Notice this moment, right here and now. It is good to be alive. It is good you are here.

P.S: As a small easter egg, see if you can spot the Kākā in the picture behind my poem.