Circles

Recently I have spent some time pondering circles.
Plain old circles.
What then is a circle?
Or rather what is the circle I have been thinking about?
The circle of life.
The circle that seems to be our lives somedays.
The circles that are complete and the ones that feel broken.
As though they are a wheel missing spokes.
In the recent past we have been able to share in the joys of birth and the sorrow of loss.
In the middle of it all I must admit that I had some very maudlin moments.
I contemplated my own small world.
I marveled that in my life I've been given the gift of beautiful and healthy children.
At this moment in time I feel like the circle is complete with some of them.
Yet there is a longing for a completion of the circle with others.
I contemplated that in some ways the circle seems to also be life.
Perhaps life is made of many circles.
Pieces of it may look like twisted hoopla hoops, making relationships that seem to have trouble staying on a straight path.
Others are the perfect ring, flowing smoothly.
Circles that interconnect yet are separate.
We are so blessed to have many different circles of friends.
Some we see so seldom it is as if they are stars in a faraway galaxy.
The circles are seen but don't seem to be able to connect with each other.
As if they are on different planes at this moment in time and space.
Others may be like the cylindrical drinking glasses in the kitchen cupboard.
Easily accessible and always at the ready.
Somedays it feels as if life is a runaway unicycle.
It takes on a momentum of its own and I am powerless to stop its increasing speed.
It races into the unknown that is the future.
Somedays I want to shriek at the top of my lungs for it to stop.
I want to throw a lasso and stop its headlong race.
Just for a moment.
Long enough to find the glue and fix the broken circles.
Long enough to complete the circles so we can all join in the same race.
Just long enough to know that we are all going in the same direction.
Then I have to realize that some of the circles are mine.
Mine to work at and make whole.
And still others are in what seems to be that other galaxy.
The one I can only gaze at and appreciate.
They are in a different world.
A world that is far away from mine.
They aren't my circles after all.