Living Tree Poetry

What do we do with the monsters?

When we were children
we would play with torches
and with sheets.

Do you remember?

How we would run down hallways,
jump around corners
and scare each other in the dark.

Maybe that
is what we’re to remember
in the moments that we recoil

from fear
or anger,
injustice witnessed.

Sometimes we’re not sure what it is
that rings our bells,
causes a rise inside.

Nevertheless we know that
we are,
dealing with monsters,

whether of the external
or internal kind –
it’s sometimes hard to discern.

We can’t easily point a finger,
that doesn’t send three
back to us.

But I wonder

if we can recall
the memory
of pulling sheets from siblings,

and laughing with them
in the dark.
We might protect ourselves from harm then,

and safeguard ourselves apart.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
May 2019

“Everything can be taken from a man or woman except for one thing, the last of human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Victor E. Frankl