Here I Am -- A Poem

-
Here I am

Protected. Safe.
All around are fences.
Structures of logic and sense.
Walls of rules and promises.
Armaments of design and expectation.
A framework to keep out hazards that put me in peril.

Here I am
Told what creates happiness and peace
Explanations of what joy looks like
Definitions of what goodness sounds like
Clarifications of what is meaning
Here is how you live
This is who you should be
Here is what brings value
This is worth

Here I am
Young and growing
Pure and full of love
Yearning for all things beautiful and true
I will complete this catalog of requirements
This list of who to be
Yes I will be THAT
That which is expected
That which is never questioned
And on and on I go

Here I am
Protected and cocooned
Inside the bubble of fantasy
Knowing nothing of what lies beyond
Does the slug know what exists outside my garden as it walks along the leaves?
Does the fish know what occurs beyond the bowl in which it swims?
Does the flower know how the soil feels on the other side of the forest?
I do not
I see only this leaf on which I am walking
Only this bowl in which I am swimming
Only this soil in which I am extending my roots

Here I am
These fences are fading
Slowly losing strength they are becoming thinner
Once standing firm and strong
Now filmy and permeable
What will protect me?
What will show me the way?
Fear and uncertainty are new companions
Unbidden constants
The walls come crumbling down
No more fences
No more boundaries
A world of the unknown
The betwixt and between
A world of the uncharted
The unrecognized

Here I am
Free from boundaries yet dubious
Clear of walls yet uncertain
Full of broad horizons yet afraid
How to know what to do
Where to go
When to feel
How to live
Who to be

Here I am
Unrecognizable surely
To others probably
But mostly to myself
As the walls dissolved around me
The only strategy was to begin
Building piece by piece
Constructing from scratch
Creating the new


Here I am
Unfettered but sometimes afraid
Able and strong but sometimes unsure
Passionate and mighty
Courageous and inquisitive
Curious and full of wonder
Uncertain but full of hope


And Here I Am
Knowing only one thing
That I am made of love

And that is enough

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“Life is Beautiful, In Spite of Everything”

-
Image
Why write? Who are we writing to? What for?  Writing beckons me as a teacher, a healer and a therapist.  There are lessons in writing.  There is meaning in language - words chosen and pieced together in just the right way.  For me, there is something quite visceral about the words on a page.  I can feel it in my bones or find it catching my breath.  But I often find it difficult to convey what’s going on in my head and heart in a language that fits.   But then I met Etty.  Esther "Etty" Hillesum is not with us anymore, at least not in the physical sense.  But she has been with me every day since we were introduced.  Our introduction was simple - a brief mention in a book accompanied with a quote from her, which I couldn’t seem to get out of my head.  “There are many miracles in a human life.  My own has been one long sequence of inner miracles”.  The pull drawing me towards her was magnetic.  I dove in - Wikipedi...
Read more

My new education

-
I left the tiny bubble of a very strict, highly conformist religion 8 years ago. The world I was born and raised in was a very small one.  I had received an excellent education and my 3 siblings and I graduated college with a Bachelor’s Degrees or higher.  But my knowledge of the REAL world was lacking to say the least. Through new experiences, curiosity and openness I slowly recognized the warped lens through which I had been seeing the world for 37 years.  It’s scary and uncomfortable to come to such a realization. Scary because change is painful and I would likely hurt, make uncomfortable or cause conflict with others along the way.  Uncomfortable that I was wrong about so many things, had judged others unfairly and known so much less than I thought.  The shock and bewilderment I felt as I came out of this fog is hard to put into language.  The closest I can get is to describe it as disorienting with a dash of shame and regret thrown in for good measure....
Read more

Pain: The Universal Constant

-
Over the Holiday break our family had the opportunity to head up to our cabin in the nearby Sequoia national forest for a snowy night in the woods.  For us, the cabin is a magical place providing distance from the frenetic pace of “regular” life in a place full of comfort, love, warmth and connection with nature and with each other. The roads had been cleared of snow, or so we thought, and we made plans to head to dinner at the local restaurant.  But on our drive through the small community we came upon a patch of ice and got stuck.  Unable to get any traction we spent over an hour attempting to put on the new, fancy, self-tightening snow chains.  After plenty of frozen hands, laying on the ice, and lots of slippery feet pushing on the back of our car, it was determined those chains were just not going to fit.  Thanks to a local and a shovel we managed to rock the car enough to get it going while the rest of us walked the remaining ¼ mile to the restaurant....
Read more