stripping and putting on
a very dear friend of mine, who reads me like a book, sent this incredible poem by may swenson to me a few days ago.
i always felt like a bird blown through the world. i never felt like a tree. i never wanted a patch of this earth to stand in, that would stick to me. i wanted to move by whatever throb my muscles sent to me.
i never cared for cars, that crawled on land or air or sea. if i rode, i’d rather another animal: horse, camel, or shrewd donkey. never needed a nest, unless for the night, or when winter overtook me. never wanted an extra skin between mine and the sun, for vanity or modesty.
would rather not have parents, had no yen for a child, and never felt brotherly. but i’d borrow or lend love of friend. let friend be not stronger or weaker than me.
never hankered for heaven, or shield from hell, or played with the puppets devil and deity. i never felt proud as one of the crowd under the flag of a country. or felt that my genes were worth more or less than beans, by accident of ancestry.
never wished to buy or sell. i would just as well not touch money. never wanted to own a thing that wasn’t i born with. or to act by a fact not discovered by me.
i always felt like a bird blown through the world. but i would like to lay the egg of a world in a nest of calm beyond this world’s storm and decay. i would like to own such wings as light speeds on, far from this globule of night and day.
i would like to be able to put on, like clothes, the bodies of all those creatures and things hatched under the wings of that world.
