Softened

When I’m far too connected,
too aware of world news,
when the blue computer screen
and the phone, the iPad,
the television, the everything
of everywhere overwhelm
my solitary soul, I search
for the soft, the disconnected,
the backward, the slow.

Reading by candlelight,
baking bread from scratch,
writing by a wood fire with
my feet propped on an open
window, a cup of fragrant tea
in the moonlight, or a nap
under a tree in dappled sunlight,
and I come back to myself,
back to life, awake and aware,
disconnected to connect once more.