Reckoning: haibun of Donna H. DiCello

Description

“This is a love story, a tale of farewells, a journey through endings, an odyssey of beginnings. Through an interweaving of reflective prose and gossamer-like haiku, Donna DiCello narrates the emotional challenges of leaving. behind her life’s work as a psychotherapist and beginning the work of a new creative endeavor, the writing of poems.”
— Nancy Gerber, Ph.D. (author, Language Like Water: Poems)

Pushing Away from Shore

I look in the mirror, to see if I have physically shifted — if how I literally see myself is changed. I know that my perception has shifted, as I close the door to a full-time psychology practice. I must look at who I am, what my descriptors are, the first words that come to mind when I now look at my image. Since the age of twelve, “psychologist” has been the center in my vernacular. What made me decide so young to take on that mantle? Now I feel like I am wearing a coat that doesn’t quite fit — the sleeves too short, the pattern not right. The word feels more elusive when I say it in reference to myself. Will it eventually become my shadow thought?

the seed pod
settles in the garden
life given freely

I sit in my office, fingers on the keyboard. I have entered a writerly life. I am fully in my writing program, a close cloak for the transition, a holder for my writing in a similar way that a session holds the therapy. I feel expansion in my chest, in my mind. I think of Emily Dickinson’s words, “Dwell in possibility.” I begin with poems, my first love for their mystery, conciseness, truth. I write about awe. I feel settled.

lava hardens
into rock . . .
cracks grow green

I sit at my desk and look out the window, letting my eyes rest on the pine trees in the distance. This is the ritual I do when I open my imagination and begin writing. I realize what I want to write about — my retirement. Perhaps it will help others who enter this transition feeling untethered, alone in their feelings. It is different, ending this type of work, where one is intimately entwined daily with so many lives. I reread the journal I kept as I went through the process, keeping close to my feelings as well as my patients’. The conflict, the sadness, balancing it all. I realize my chronological age, and there is no changing that fewer years stretch ahead than behind. If not now, when? I feel privileged that I can make this transition. I can bear the weight of years. I hope I’ve chosen wisely.

the river knows
when to bend
rich delta

ISBN: 978-1-958408-97-1
Pages: 72
Size: 4.25″ x 6.5″
Binding: perfect softbound
Year Published: 2026