It was the 12th of April, and I was weaving vines beneath the afternoon sun. The day was strangely empty. I felt very alone.
I paused for a moment, watching the finches and moths darting through the winter-scorched hawthorn. What would I do if I were so free? But no sooner had I thought it than I felt an invisible restraint tighten around me A lifetime of training, my experience in a world of No.
Ego-identity, woven tight as a corset. Woven by others, mostly, their projections and expectations, and now, I realized suddenly, I was confined by an identity that wasn't even mine.
It's not that what I wanted was wrong - I only wanted to follow the butterflies and be...I don't know...something that wasn't this collection of assumptions and do something. But there are things you learn out of habit, and always there had been someone to put up a hand to stop me. Always a reason why I couldn't, or failing that, an explanation of why I was somehow less than others who had done the same. For the first time, I think, I truly understood the reason why the freedom of my body depended on the freedom of my mind.
I stretched out among the vines feeling so tired, enlightened but tired, and the same sun shone down upon us all, the moths and the finches and even something as small and pathetic as someone like me.
Lovely, but sad. That last line :(
ReplyDeleteOh, dear. I'm afraid my current mood made it seem far more depressing than it really was. It was one of those moments when you feel a shift in the pattern of your life.
DeleteThere’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know
ReplyDeletewhat kind, that glimmers
by mid-May
in the forest, just
as the pink mocassin flowers
are rising.
If you notice anything,
it leads you to notice
more
and more.
And anyway
I was so full of energy.
I was always running around, looking
at this and that.
If I stopped
the pain
was unbearable.
If I stopped and thought, maybe
the world
can’t be saved,
the pain
was unbearable.
Finally, I noticed enough.
All around me in the forest
the white moths floated.
How long do they live, fluttering
in and out of the shadows?
You aren’t much, I said
one day to my reflection
in a green pond,
and grinned.
The wings of the moths catch the sunlight
and burn
so brightly.
At night, sometimes,
they slip between the pink lobes
of the moccasin flowers and lie there until dawn,
motionless
in those dark halls of honey.
So beautiful, and very relevant, too. Thank you, MP. xxx
ReplyDelete