Here is another poem about the journey of becoming (a favourite theme, I must admit!). This one articulates some of the fears and risks -- when we struggle to leave taught dysfunctions behind and grapple with the truth of our lives, facing the fact that many of the things that have held us in bondage are falsehoods perpetrated by those who needed us to be what they required rather than what we were born to be, there are tremendous emotional risks. We are venturing into foreign country, truly the other side of the world where the rules work differently.
I cannot name the soul’s antipodes
The places I have not been are uncharted regions
Full of rumour and guesswork:
Here there be dragons!
What happens if I fall off the world’s edge?
Sensible men, guarded with careful eyes
Put up danger signs on the beaches,
Finding this land sufficient,
Certain that strange new spices will disrupt the blood,
And that equatorial heat is a consuming conflagration.
I tremble at my own temerity.
But there is no home for me here,
I must put out my cockleshell boat
On the waves of my terrible fear
Not knowing what storms may await me
In the realm where the octopus dwells,
Where whales tower like cities
And legends may leap into life.
And know, as I push off from shore,
That those who take this journey
Do not come to the complacent coasts again.
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1 comment:
Your word-pictures are so vivid here. They evoke a lot of feeling in me and empathy for what you have experienced, although my own dysfunctional family of birth was and is somewhat different, as you know. I think there are some aspects of dysfunctionality that are universal, however. The effort to control is one of those characteristics. It is a victory for an abused child to break away from that and find freedom.
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