What binds you?
What holds you back?
Is it something you can see in front of you? Behind you?
or do you just feel the fear of cutting the strings?
the strings...the bars....
the cage....
I was told that yesterday was
National Poem-in-Your-Pocket-Day (interesting),
so it's no surprise to me that this very poem came home in my four-year-old son's pocket.
And in this poem, this is what bound Ted Kooser, an American poet:
Breezy and warm
A round hay bale,
brown and blind, all shoulders,
huddled, bound tightly
by sky blue nylon twine.
Just so I awoke this morning,
wrapped in fear.
Oh, red plastic flag on a stick
stuck into loose gravel,
driven over, snapped off,
propped up again and again,
give me your courage.
Ah, finally! Someone else in this world looks at objects wrapped up too tightly and feels their pain, envies other objects for their resilience.
And oh, how grateful I am to recognize that it's because this feeling is no longer a part of my feeling vocabulary.
Bounded only by how much I've set myself free,
only how far the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.
May you become untangled from all that binds you
and become free of the fear of being let go - and letting go.
