Last week I lay awake wondering how I could possibly meet my book writing deadline before leaving on a long road trip. Get up at four, stay up late, add a thousand more words to the day’s quota? All my deadlines are brutal, and all of them are self-imposed, and as I lay there worrying, a voice said to me: You don’t have to, you know.

And then a memory popped into my mind of my baby nephew, and how once, on a family vacation, in a room full of cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, I watched him unfold a small sleeping mat all by himself in a corner of the room, lie down on it, and just…go to sleep.

The Virtue of Trusting One’s Mind, by Marcia Slatkin

When goats don’t want to move,
they don’t make sounds.

They fold legs at bald knees,
bend rough necks to earth,
and just sink down.

They never

rant, rail,
protest, declaim,
debate, explain, and then,
head bowed, plod meekly
forward anyway,

as I did
as a child—
and still do now.
​

This poem is from A Woman Milking: Barnyard Poems​, by Marcia Slatkin, published by Word Poetry Books. 

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter