You have to decide.
Will you choose to care about Sanity?
or about a harp and the tiny, fallen
macaw feathers gathered in the Amazon.
These are serious questions.
Choose sanity and your dog's paws in winter make a dreary mess,
smear of sodden earth, hard marks on the mean floor.
Or will her tracks sing as earth paintings,
the round pad, the tip of claws,
melded into form from earth and rain.
the temporary art, the natural sand painting meant be destroyed.
Will you choose to be broke, clawing your pocket for change,
Hunching to duck the punch of inequity?
Or to choose the crazy thing,
to buy the small wooden Celtic harp, 26 strings,
each holding strange promise,
because your fingers cup, the harpers hand,
to pluck one unimagined note, a song never sung.
to rest your forehead on her and whisper thank you,
and feel her rise through your heart, a flush of pleasure like birds.
Will you choose the cement heart, too dense to beat or dance,
or the small handful of feathers,
painted by flight-soaked wings in orange and pink and green,
drifting down from the long sky, a slow swirl to a forest floor,
a gift you always wanted
but never knew you could request.
Will you choose to sterilize your senses, anesthetize your heart,
Your brain a bobble head on stick, soul surrendered?
It is such a seductive choice in the Sane world,
To numb your fingers to the touch of feathers and harp string.
How will you wake up?
Afraid of the day, knowing the World is crazy,
Knowing it will kill you if you stay?
or know the drift to sanity by kissing the harp,
drown in dickinson or faulker,
rub moss on your fingers,
decorate your hair with the feathers and dance
naked on the shimmer of hoar frost.
These are serious questions.
will you be who you are as you are and say
I am broken and I am whole.
Or say I do not and I will not ever belong.
wonder this until something breaks like the crack of twig
beneath your feet on the forest walk.
then you'll know.
you'll stop and bend down to see the broken twig
and you will recognize the twig is you.
you have cracked your frozen heart and found the waterfall.
Lora Jansson, November 15, 2014