If you can release what is your grasp
letting those cramped fingers stretch out and loose,
while strained muscles relax in a soft gasp
after long years of negligent misuse,
and just watch contented as what you thought
so essential to your old sense of self,
those safe and predictable treasures bought
with coin bearing the face of someone else,
now rise with the breeze and fly from your view,
leaving only a faint smell of feather
in the moist crevasse of your empty hand
that evaporates like the morning dew,
in that moment you, too, are untethered
from the painful need to misunderstand.
11 APR 2003
