Life Lessons November 4, 2009

Now I Become Myself

Now I become myself.  It’s taken

Time, many years and places;

I have been dissolved and shaken,

Worn other people’s faces,

Run madly, as if Time were there,

Terriby old, crying a warning,

“Hurry, you will be dead before–”

(What? Before you reach the morning?

Or the end of the poem is clear?

Or love safe in the walled city?)

Now to stand still, to be here,

Feel my own weight and density!

The black shadow on the paper

Is my hand; the shadow of a word

As thought shapes the shaper

Falls heavy on the page, is heard.

All fuses now, falls into place

From wish to action, word to silence,

My work, my love, my time, my face

Gathered into one intense

Gesture of growing like a plant.

As slowly as the ripening fruit

Fertile, detached, and always spent,

Falls but does not exhaust the root,

So all the poem is, can give,

Grows in me to become the song,

Made so and rooted by love.

Now there is time and Time is young.

O, in this single hour I live

All of myself and do not move.

I, the pursued, who madly ran,

Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

~ Mary Sarton

If not for the cat,

And the scarcity of cheese,

I could be content.

~ Jack Prelutsky (If Not For the Cat)

If not for courage,

Knowing thyself and learning,

What would teaching be?

~ Beth Frye – inspired by Jack Prelutsky

the drum

daddy says the world

is a drum tight

and hard

and i told him

i’m gonnna beat out

my own rhythm

~ nikki giovanni

 

Each one of these poems touched me in a special, yet different way.  I simply wanted to post them to my blog because I feel they are a part of me; who I am, who I have become, and who I am going to be.  I feel like all of my life experiences have mixed, molded, and shaped into who I am today.  Now, that I am culminating my experience as an undergraduate college student, I feel that I can reflect on these things and really recognize who I have become.  Now I Become Myself really opened my eyes to these wondrous epiphanies.

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