Growing Wings

Dearest Friend,

Today, I share with you a short piece/prose poem I created, as well as a favorite poem by a beloved poet.

You may remember, I’ve been pondering life and age as I approach my BIG FIVE OH. (We’re down to 33 days, BTW.)

I’ve been a bit moody, I’ve been told.

If you are too (and even if you’re not), I welcome you to feel it all. Love whatever is happening within you. Pleeeeeaaaase don’t label or judge any of it as wrong.

It’s a gift to have the freedom to roam all over your emotional landscape. Run, and skip, and dance through the tall grass and the prickly bushes and the spots where the sun makes beautiful patterns as it wriggles through leaves and branches. Lay down in the moss, if you need to, and celebrate the sheer magnificence of it all. Be at peace with the wind and the clouds and the bright, warm sun.

I wouldn’t change my ‘moodiness‘ for anything.

With appreciation for all that is,

Pascale

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GROWING WINGS

Bound to the ground, we are.

Via feet, knees or full prostration,

depending on our degree of surrender to

gravity and grace.

Who had the thought first?

That those funny bones on our backs could have easily been wings, now excised?

They couldn’t possibly have known the wings we would build in our minds,

and with our hands.

Those metal tubes that pierce clouds and atmospheres might satisfy some.

Not me.

It all remains unsatisfactory to the one who wants to be

unbound,

untethered,

un-contained.

Grow me some wings, I plead to my DNA.

I promise –

I’ll be smarter than Icarus.

I’ll use my good sense and be reasonable.

(Although I admit that may be counter to the whole idea.)

It doesn’t matter.

I’m willing to strike any deal.

I long to rise above, release the heaviness and glide.

It couldn’t be that hard, I imagine.

So I close my eyes, stretch my arms, and I fly.

My heart smiles.

And sometimes, so does my face.

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I Am Too Alone In The World, And Not Alone Enough

By Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly

I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough

to make every moment holy.

I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough

just to lie before you like a thing,

shrewd and secretive.

I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,

as it goes toward action;

and in those quiet, sometimes hardly moving times,

when something is coming near,

I want to be with those who know secret things

or else alone.

I want to be a mirror for your whole body,

and I never want to be blind, or to be too old

to hold up your heavy and swaying picture.

I want to unfold.

I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,

because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

and I want my grasp of things to be

true before you. I want to describe myself

like a painting that I looked at

closely for a long time,

like a saying that I finally understood,

like the pitcher I use every day,

like the face of my mother,

like a ship

that carried me

through the wildest storm of all.

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