What it Means to Be Free
We sit on the plane, we watch,
we see clouds, grey hills,
the road edged with fuchsia,
and from a vision, near Bantry,
an old man walking on the wet road.
Behind him the light opens
in a long arch across the sea.
He has a stick, a hat, old shoes,
a gait that says he will walk forever.
He reaches out, touching the bright
bell-like overhanging flowers with his stick.
His face lifts, catching the light as I look
out the window through deep veils
of cynicism and irony flooding the landscape.
From his face I look down at my book
into the dark interior of the plane
surprised by the single tear.
Knowing how long it took - even to feel.
Now it seems after years of walking
the homecoming happened in a single step.
The imagination cradled so long
returns grown with its manly gift
and the shut bud of my emotion
opens like a flower on the white page.
-from The Seven Streams: An Irish Cycle
A very appropriate post by Angela in my office, given we have all just freshly returned from Ireland. I can’t remember the book I was reading on the plane, heading west, as I looked out over the Irish coastline stretching to the north, but I had just witnessed the image of the older man walking the narrow lane above Bantry, touching the red hanging Fuscia with his stick, just a few days before. Book and memory combined to open me up and out of nowhere source the tears that began to fall. I do believe that one of the great tasks in life is to overcome our natural defences against previous hurt, in all its forms, and feel things to the depths again. This poem chronicles one of those threshold moments in the subtle and not so subtle transitions from being defensively numb to being vulnerably alive again. DW
A very appropriate post by Angela in my office, given we have all just returned from Ireland. I can't remember the book I was reading on the plane, heading west, as I looked out over the Irish coastline stretching to the north, but I had just witnessed the image of the older man walking the narrow lane above Bantry and touching the red hanging Fuscia with his stick, just a few days before. Book and memory combined to open me up and out of nowhere source the tears that began to fall. I do believe that one of the great tasks in life is to overcome our natural defences against previous hurt, in all its forms, and feel things to the depths again. This poem chronicles one of those threshold moments in the subtle and not so subtle transitions from being defensively numb to being vulnerably alive again. DW
“I do believe that one of the great tasks in life is to overcome our natural defences against previous hurt, in all its forms, and feel things to the depths again”
This resonates so damn deeply right now - thank you ❤️