"Freedom Song" poem from 7-11 Sacred Space Celebration

FREEDOM SONG

It was in this that she found it,

the moment when the words,

arrows hurled from a past, misguided, misshapen,

glanced off once-quavering bones that would dissolve spine and spirit

in that cautious inversion of self.

Yet now, even with the scourge of blazing eyes

and the shrapnel of wounding ways still lodged deep,

she found a slither of something softer to hold onto —

a landing beyond the flames,

and a psalm that swept across the chasm,

crying out in compassion for the mirror

of a blistering soul.

It came to him in sudden solitude,

following the dance of partners and the drifting apart

that seemed to hound every slow, sweet waltz,

plucking rubies and gold from their eyes.

Yes, here he was, broken again,

yet holding fast, for once, to the edge,

and the knife-cut of fear,

spilling truth that he’d fled and denied.

And he sat with it all, eyes on some horizon,

that recognized, even in this pruning phase, the fresh face of love,

beckoning not from the other

but from the ruins that sheltered hope’s seed.

She tasted it then,

with the thing that she could not say perched on her tongue

and pushing forward to fill the space

that she wanted to claim for herself.

And it was not heavy,

wrapped in worry, and weighted with dread.

No, for it was that which had stifled her joy —

the compromise and sacrifice all spun

from a shrunken self worth.

But now there was the bold shucking of story,

desires let loose from their cage

and a hymn championing their flight

in a voice that she knew as her own.

He learned it at long last,

staring down the canvas of a life standing still and unhinged.

Clutched by familiar paralysis,

roiled by his own resistance,

he saw the throng of excuses marshalling their might

against the dreams that ran wild in his head —

and decided this time to push back,

rooting out the patterns that had been

plunderer of passion’s bidding

and untethered all goals from their faith.

And riding those beasts, singed by the dragon’s spume

and the scent of smallness,

he grasped a necessary courage

for that first stroke of light on his slate.

And so it comes,

in neither a roar nor a rush,

without thunderous pronouncement and seismic shifts,

and the flags flying high at the gates.

It may not even be the still voice

or the unwrapped prayer come to

soothe you to sleep in the night.

No, sometimes freedom is the small step,

or different choice, the clear vision

or unlocked word

that appears in the sameness

and sings.

-- Naila Francis

7/7/10