It’s a difficult time for small businesses in the U.S. as many have been shutdown by the COVID-19 outbreak. As states begin measures to reopen, business owners are weighing their options for how to open safely, or even at all. Staci Martin owns a yoga studio in downtown Flagstaff and is not eligible for any relief funding, as is the case for many businesses that hire independent contractors. So, she’s been teaching Zoom yoga classes and writing poetry in her empty studio. In this week’s Poetry Friday segment, Staci brings us an original poem about balancing the darkness and the light.
SM: My business partner and colleague, Dave, took this pandemic time to adopt two puppies, so you might - as I read my poem or you hear this interview – hear the puppies in the background. They’re beautiful reminders of being fresh and new and seeing everything with a new set of eyes. (Barking). There they are! They’re barking. They remind you of what’s important and about being in the moment. So, I appreciate the puppy pandemic lessons, as well.
We’ve been struggling because, obviously, being a newer business…it’s hard. It’s crushing. It’s crushing for everybody, but it’s really hard when you’re new and you’re still trying to get your feet underneath you.
We haven’t been able to qualify for any funding because what’s unique in the fitness world – and I know a lot of gyms can speak to this and other yoga studios – is you don’t have employees. You have independent contract workers. So, what was written as a bailout, which was really cool, does only affect you if you have employees, or employees of a certain level. So, we’ve been struggling.
The one thing that I’ve had to do for myself as a business owner is to accept the possibility that we may not, in the long run, recover from this financially. So, I had to sit with that, which is dark and hard. I had to look at that in order to set myself free, to not constantly be under the weight of anxiety and depression of losing something. Right now we’ve all losing something: we’ve lost either a loved one, or our freedom, or our jobs, or our financial stability. So, it’s just this collective sense of loss and looking into the darkness and seeing what comes out of that, though. I do know personally for myself that whatever is dark, there is light.
I’d like to introduce to you a poem that came to me quite recently when I had a particularly hard moment of wondering what next and what do I do with this darkness that I’m feeling right now? It’s titled, The Way.
The Way, by Staci Martin
I have been watching the dark
The creep of it
The sneak of it
The out right belief of it
Natural and unapologetic
The dark, it comes in
Washing, rinsing, and yes
Clearing and cleansing
.
We have been taught to
Run
Hide
Fight it
Label it
And state
YOU are the evil that caused me to (fill in the blank)
But when we learn the difference between pure evil
And honest darkness
The two are not bedfellows
Then we learn the way
.
We learn that darkness
Cracks and brings about the fissures where the light can
Enter
Darkness drops the key
In front of the door
Lightness picks it up
Darkness starts to untie
The blindfold
Lightness pulls it off
And sees
Darkness unravels the
Ropes of bondage
And lightness sets us free
.
Babe, darkness can sit with you
Even though it feels like
On you
Darkness cleaned, cleared
The path
And lightness, she runs through
Your veins with the power that darkness knows best
Can you allow the two to work
Together
Reunited
They are the force and the power and the grace and the beauty
Of every single shift
Move
Shake
And the quake
Of darkness and light
And it’s the way
The way we get through
(Music: You've Got The Love, Florence + The Machine)
Poetry Friday is produced by KNAU's Gillian Ferris. If you have an idea for a segment, drop her an email at Gillian.Ferris@nau.edu.
