There is Nothing holding Us Back

Nothing holds me in this world. Only my wish to stay keeps me a prisoner.  I would give up my insane wishes and walk into the sunlight at last.
ACIM Lesson 57: 1

I read the above lesson yesterday (for the forth time maybe :)) and it triggered something in me.  I said to myself, after reading it, I have to write a poem about that.  So I came here a couple of times to write a poem about getting through the mental prison we create with our attachment to thought.  Nothing seemed to come out. Then it hit me, "I already wrote a poem about that." And I did ...a couple of summers ago...after spending a moment of escape from the stress of what awaited me inside the house .  That particular morning,  I snuck outside, curled up on a lawn chair and became consumed  with watching buttercups swaying in the breeze.  I knew I would have  to go back in and deal eventually but in that moment, just sitting there, I felt so connected, so alive and so free. Hmmm! I'll share because I believe it applies to Lesson Two.

Buttercups

I breathe in.

Tethered to the end

of feathery ribbons,

my eyes are pulled

to the buttercups

waving in the distance.

Yellow tutued dancers

gracefully perform on

elegant long bodies

that bend

backwards

and

forwards

while

billowing arms

extend into

the morning sky.

I breathe out.

 

Green limbs sweep

the earth

this way

and that

as bodies balance

on delicate point shoes.

I breathe in again.

 

For this brief moment

of what is,

I am mesmerized

by the dancers' perfection.

I am mesmerized

by the dance.

The brilliance of the

Choreographer’s artistry

surrounds me and

I am lost in a trance of now.

Like the dancing flowers

I am consumed by what is.

I breathe out.

 

 

Lulled by His orchestra,

I close my eyes.

I listen to the

majesty of every chord

as the June breeze

strums the delicate instruments

above my weary head.

He whispers to me

in the sweetest of voices

that I am home,

and His gentle Voice

drowns out

the nasty reprimands,

the ticking clocks,

and

the ringing phones

from the other world.

I smile and relax into

 this brief moment

of what is.

In and out

I breathe again

 

But the breath

gets stuck in my chest.

The other world’s noises

are determined to

disrupt the silence

and the stillness

of my now.

Suddenly,

I feel the pulling of

something cold

around my ankle.

I look down to see

the heavy iron shackles

and feel the tug of chain

pulling me back and away

from “Fairy land”,

from “irresponsibility”

and “make belief”.

I am being drawn so cruelly

from this brief moment

of what is

to the real world.

 

There I find myself once again

and I shiver on the cold floor

of painful memory,

beneath the ominous clouds

of future fantasy.

I pick up the uniform

of social expectation,

limitation

and

“real world” responsibility

and reluctantly

I put it on

as I am told to do.

It is heavy.

It weighs me down.

 

How I long for the flimsy

fabric of the dancer’s costume.

I want to run back

to their performance,

to lose myself in their

grace filled moment

but the chains

I have created

in my mental cell

hold me firm.

Unfriendly officers

armed with past and future

weapons

threaten me at every corner.

 

A model inmate,

I follow their orders

and their senseless directions

as I move around this

dark world

towards the “what ifs”

and the “whens”

that will never lead to freedom.

 

I cry out in silence

for the yellow tutued dancers

to free me.

In the emptiness of a busy day

of doing,

in the very prison wall

that surrounds me,

a window emerges

out of nowhere.

Through its small opening,

I see the yellow tutus

swaying back and forth.

The long elegant limbs

of the beautiful dancers

beckon me forward

into the light.

 

I hear the music

that makes me smile.

I feel the sun and wind

on my aging skin

and the gentle tugging

of this moment’s soft ribbons

against my willing flesh.

I am at last  willing to go.

 

I stop heeding the voices

of the armed guards around me

and they become

phantom shadows

with no solid hands

to hold me back.

I step out of the shackles

and the iron restrictions

that once held me here

become dust around me.

I bring a knee up

to crawl through

that small opening

but suddenly

there is no wall.

I am free.

There is no more confinement

for anyone or anything.

 

I enter the present

that calls me,

into this never ending

moment of

what is.

I find myself swaying,

dancing,

bending

being in unison  with

the yellow tutued buttercups

that dance life’s only song.

 

And I know I am alive.

 

Dale-Lyn June, 2016