Christopher Haywood Poet Quatrain

Notes About The Poem

I met "burnout" recently and this is an exact description of what I felt.  Have an escape.

The Grinding Gear

The morning breaks not with light, but with a sound— 
A low, vibrating hum beneath the floor, 
The stress of deadlines, heavy and unbound,
That gather like a storm behind the door. 

It is a phantom hand upon the throat, 
A tightening of wires within the chest, 
Where every frantic, scribbled morning note 
Becomes a thief that steals the power to rest.

The shoulders rise to meet the burning ears, 
The jaw is locked against a silent scream; 
A calendar of mounting, modern fears 
Has turned the waking world into a dream—
 
But not the kind where one might fly or drift, 
Instead, a race through thickening, gray sand, 
Waiting for the heavy fog to lift, 
Or for a clock to stop its sweeping hand.

Then comes the moment when the tension snaps, 
Not like a string, but like a melting frost. 
The mind retreats from all its clever traps, 
And counts the heavy price of being lost.
 
It starts within the lungs, a shallow well 
That finally finds the depth to take a breath; 
The ringing of a loud, internal bell 
Signifies the frantic worry’s death.

The tension spills like water from a jar, 
The iron in the muscles turns to oil.
The things that felt so heavy and so far 
Begin to loosen from their frantic coil. 

It is the cooling rain on sunbaked stone, 
The sudden silence in a crowded street, 
A sense of being centered and alone, 
Where mind and body finally learn to meet.

The world is still the same, the tasks remain, 
But now the hands are steady at the wheel. 
There is a strange perspective born of pain, 
A newfound grace in learning how to feel.
 
Relief is not the absence of the chore, 
But knowing how to carry what we must, 
To walk through every open, waiting door 
With quiet strength and a weathered trust.

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