Ode to Resilience: 2025
By: Jonathan Pofsky, LMFT
www.marinstressanxietycenter.com
This year and all its hopes
An ode to our resilience
A test of inner spirit and
Our faith, our strength and brilliance
These days left in a pile
The golden road obscured
Winding through the mountains
From a sacred path we’re lured
The search for space to rest
From all of life’s transgressions
To lay our bodies down in
An earthly cast of our impressions
Where we can gaze up upon
The sea of mythic stars
That serve as mirrored reflections
Of glimmering truths of ours
The starlight you bring with you
As you make your way back down
Fills up the spine that holds you
From your seat up to your crown
In this body you take notice
And inhabit for some time
A light that sometimes goes out
You light again with every rhyme
It’s the gift that sets you free
From all that can be hard
What forms the walls of prisons
With the keepers that stand guard
The ones that keep you quiet
Or talking without reason
The ones that work to keep you safe
In every single season
This season though is falling
The gratitude leaves the tree
And falls upon each one of us
And connects us to the sea
Where we can be reminded
What you go through, I do too
Each in our own unique ways
The beasts stuck in the zoo
Caged from what is wild
Too much time to stomp and stress
Obscured from the night sky
The cosmic space to decompress
So we howl unto the night sky
And hear the howl come back
We remember we’re not as lonely
When we hear the lightning crack
It wakens us from this stupor
In our thoughts we can get lost
All the things that we’re not yet
Is its own kind of exhaust
Now as we gather here together
Let us howl and howl again
So we can feel the spirit
Of resilience now and then
But if you’re feeling quiet
Howl silently in your soul
And you will light the inner fire
That will still get you to your goal
See all the faces around you
That want you to succeed
In what feeds your soul in this life
Live for what you really need
Remember you are resilient
With every grief and all the pain
The balm of self-compassion
In every soft drop of the rain
So let’s all walk together
Community till the end
Where we can all be a shoulder
To our family or a friend
Resilience is in us all
The fire from every ember
That returns these words to dust
Until it’s just love that we remember