Today marks the beginning of the November Poem a Day Challenge. Today’s first prompt provided by Poetry Pub is “Beginning.” It is hard for me to write a poem about beginning when T.S. Eliot’s lines from “Little Giding” are all I can think about. He says, “What we call the beginning is often the end… And to make and end is to make a beginning.”

Here’s an attempt to get things started.

A beginning may not be the first step,
But it may be the next, the one after the last,
After you’ve given up on past
Regrets and resentments
And let go your demands
For the outcomes of future plans.

Beginnings begin with an end.
And with it a new start:
Like rising with the morning,
Back around to where you’ve begun,
Again make the coffee, feed the cat,
Read the paper in your chair,
And watch for the sun
As you sit in the quiet with One
Who neither slumbers nor sleeps,
Has no beginning or ending.

Some day, the endings shall end,
And in that last beginning,
The beginnings will never end.
And every moment which we marked in time--
Come to us, arriving, and then passing by,
Will be one in an eternal present,
Not moving to, through, then past,
But moving into always, and we 
Will never outlast the beginning.


© Randall Edwards 2021.