Sometimes I want to shake off the wrappings
that give me shape and substance,
the weariness of weight.
Sometimes,
watching the clouds rise,
their ties cut as children carrying balloons –
sometimes, I want to reach out,
hang onto the coattails of everything
going, rising,
losing their bearings.
That everything seems easier
up there in the winds
may simply be illusion,
but sometimes I want to lay on my bed,
feel the noise recede,
the room move
to somewhere different –
where the only sound
is that of the sea inside a shell,
or the wind through the pines
on the mountain’s incline –
somewhere its important I don’t know
the co-ordinates.
Yes, that everything that is wrapping
is truly immaterial,
other that in the way it grows us closer to heaven,
is a truth that sometimes sits
like an impatient seed
waiting for spring.
It yearns that we would shake
off husk and break open,
send forth shoots.
That sometimes to shake off the wrappings
is not to give up,
or in, but simply to want the way to heaven
to be more than conjecture or estimation –
and instead entirely clear.
That within somewhere we know,
escapism is not about emptying,
but rather sensing the place of our origin
calling on the winds.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
March 2021
Living Tree Poetry 