Out

I am done
with looking out of windows.
Done, I tell you, determined
to go out in the weather,
storms and all. Anger and all.
Out where the sun shines and the frost falls.
Where the wild things live
and feelings are felt rather than protected,
out where love lives and dies and lives again
and all the glory and pain of loss change each day
like seasons in fast forward.

About this poem

I recently stumbled on some old old poetry, written in my early fifties when I was in the darkest of times. So may of them used the image of windows and walls, things that let me see the world, but kept me from them. What a journey since then as I moved beyond the windows and walls and allowed the pain. Because you never get through the pain without feeling it first. And you never find true joy without feeling the pain first. That’s the way it works.

The picture was taken in Pittsford, MA.

Tom