💛 So, sometimes, I publish poetry on here, too — could be anyone's (this one's mine) — for this reason: the feeling elicited by a poem might capture something prose cannot. Or, as one of my favorite poets, David Whyte, said, it is "language against which we have no defenses."
TRAVELING LIGHTLY
For Love I would lay down
What I usually carry
So that I may travel faster
And more freely.
And so I do.
The heavy shield, once mine, appears
Smaller behind me with every step.
“What a remnant,” I think.
I don’t know why I waited so long.
I was a fool! I’m one now, too.
I was afraid! I was afraid of my own death,
Of becoming something else.
Experiments turn to gestures, to new posture.
So it is with traveling lightly:
You become something new merely by
Giving it a go — small steps — again and again.
— LB