Haven

[kaberett]

Harbours
are not built
to be impermeable.
Shelter in a storm
is nonetheless a
threshold
to the wide
liminality
of the world entire.
Safety is not bound within
a cage.

Comments

[shehasathree]

♥

[kaberett]

Counselling is really good for me, heh. I was walking home from the co-op last night and suddenly realised that for all much of what i do is driven by the desperate desire to be "safe", I've been inadvertently boxing myself in; and starting to think about what "safe" might look like in an expansive rather than restrictive sense...

Obvious influences on this poem (to me): Mary Oliver's Don't Hesitate ("Joy is not meant to be a crumb"), Black Girl Dangerous On Getting Free, Neruda's Odes to Opposites wot I am reading at the moment (in stylistic terms, particularly the very short lines).

This is perhaps the opposite of your poem

[cadenzamuse]

Heaven—Haven

A nun takes the veil

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins

(Also, I rather think that Mother Theresa, among many others, would disagree with Hopkins' description of a life devoted to service, reflection, and entering into the Presence of Mystery. But damn, the man could poem.)

Re: This is perhaps the opposite of your poem

[kaberett]

oh, but it plays with the title-thing that was calling to me!

and -- yes, I probably disagree with it; and yes -- yes, it is a poem. Thank you so much for sharing it.

[alexseanchai]

And each of us an island with our separate rocky shores, but an island's not a prison, that's what men make bridges for.