This is a new poem to express the pull and push felt for my two very different homes – my two worlds. It expresses how and why we go on in spite of exhaustion, shock, or injustice.
When you come to love a place and a people, you also see the dark sides that inevitably exist there – the elements of life that contradict sweet feelings. So what do we do when the sun is shadowed, and doubt or anger replace feelings of joy? How do we keep looking forward? How can we rediscover hope if it is ever lost?
We must live in whatever shadow comes, feel it, and then recognize how life will always go on. We must understand that no matter how much we may tumble, there is always some far-away shore with some beach on which to recover. And we’ll leave our footprints there in the sand – for someone else to find, or to simply be washed away – as we walk on from one world to the next. Where is the hope? It’s in the knowledge that simply walking can make a difference.
Two Worlds
Pulling, repelling
I am a magnet
endlessly spinning
two homes playing with my poles.
Sometimes North is South
and I turn West
Or South is North
and I can only go East.
Or maybe North is what it should be
today
and I hold true
Or South is the solid one
and I fall backwards.
Worlds we know
turned on end
because ugly exists
alongside joy
and we can’t just brush it away.
If one world abandons reason
and the other falls into its own chasm of crazy
invisible weight bending our backs
what do we do?
Feel it,
don’t run
we only ever run on treadmills
if it’s from problems we fear to face
Embrace the beckoning
and the repulsion
don’t evade
tumble in the tide
of a wounded yet wonderful world
then crawl ashore.
Look the devil in his eyes
and see beyond.
The nebulous end is what we make it
but we cannot control its complete creation:
realize and be liberated
But we can be
and we can do
and we can leave a bit of ourselves behind
with every step we take
in every place we touch
North
West
South
East
Walk on
Feel the pull, feel the push
accept it
then fly
fall
twist
tumble
free
to find
whatever end.
This post is part of Blogging Abroad’s 2017 New Years Blog Challenge, week four: Change and Hope.
marks in the sand 
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