With Open Arms

My feet have tread this soil

half the expected years

I suspect I have been allotted

should my cycle reach its fullness.

I have been ankle deep in bullsh!t, 

but waist deep in butter and honey,

endured the pangs

from a rumbling tummy

starving for staples

not even old money

is able to purchase.

And new money,

blinded by reflective surfaces

of “Yes Men” who encircle them and leech,

will not close their eyes to blink –

clear the lenses and reach

clarity of thought

or resolution of emotion.

 

I am thankful

I never got that break

in youth that fills one with notions

of their own greatness.

I was too immature to take it –

swallow it with remnants of dead oceans.

I would have succumb to the potions

of flattery and groupie love elixirs…

so often a deadly mixture.

So many bio-pictures tell the tale.

From prominence, stars fall

from failing to recall

humble origins

that keep one planted:

the places we come from

that we’d taken for granted.

The unquestioned love and respect

that abides there.

The support that was always right here

even when I did not want it.

 

I’m glad I never got that break.

I needed these years

to build up and reshape

my character,

to sculpt prudence

from a hard head,

to reroute the path to ruin

around my bed

so love would be made there –

kept safe there, instead.

And my life has been rewarded

with pineal vision that has matured with

dignity and poise,

and has blessed me with a voice

others relate to

when my words rise from the page

like the cleansing scent of smoke

from burning sage.

Yes, through this journey

I have learned to embrace…

age.

 

-HymnAgen