....Fears...

Coming Home


You are coming home at night:
you pass from light to light,
walking around the block,
and your shadow swings to the right
the way a second hand
goes round a modern clock,
and other shadows, bound
to your footsteps, climb the walls,
or jerk along the pavement,
and some contrast and darken,
others lengthen and fade.

The lights are various loves
by whom you find your way,
by whom you see and move:
they lend you guidance, they
enable you to find
not only house and door,
and wall and window-blind,
but something less and more,
your image, multiplied,
cast for your gaze, and thrown
distorted, but your own.

And what you need the most,
O walker in the night,
is to continue, sure
the self is always right,
and neither caricature,
nor unavailing ghost.

And if a light is broken,
if one of them goes out,
as well they may, of course,
and substance takes from shadow
its absolute divorce,
be reassured, in darkness,
the self is never lost.

Rolfe Humphries

...another week is ending and my weekend will be the same as other that passed, bouring and full of fears...
....maybe i am like every other woman you have ever passed on the street but never took notice of, full of new thoughts and ideas, while sometimes quiet and contemplative; I have had great losses and wonderful wins, moments I have wanted to save in time and times I'd like to forgot...

Silence

...If I were asked to name my fears one by one, I could tell them easily to an empty room with no need for any subterfuge at all. Everything inside my head would tumble out in a great big wash of words, like a river flowing from my mouth. And it would go on and on at great lengths until at last there was nothing left to say, no secrets to keep, no hurts too raw to mention, no one thing to put up its hands and stop me on my way...
...And yet I have told this empty room more times that I have ever dared to count, adding this baggage to my house, where even the walls have been taught to keep their council ... They know me far better than I would have them know me, having tasted the salt from my tears and listened to them fall much like a lover unable to offer more than its own four walls...
...But my needs do not reduce. If anything I find myself needing more. Much like the captain of my own small ship scanning the darkness hoping to find welcoming light of a beacon and a safe harbor to sail into. But here I am adrift despite floating on a calm, cold sea and I can see for miles. But everything of what I see is everything of what I've already known, and my progress is impeded... I am rallying myself to do what needs to be done. To seek guidance from those much wiser than myself and my years of talking to walls with no hopes of being heard. I must kill this silence in me before this silence can do more to tear me apart. Bravely walking to a new future where ghosts of the past won't be allowed to continue their haunting. And I must be uncomfortable, far outside my comfort zone to accomplish my task. For if I must trade one mask for another, I choose to put my brave face on...

...for all of this i must say something that i really love:

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt

And another favorite ...

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next." - Gilda Radner

...the end...