movement and shackles

we carry the cusps within us

life is choice:

each moment has a thousand cusps

through which we move and decide,

this way or that?

most choices: six of one,

half a dozen of the other,

inconsequential in the larger scheme of things:

do I eat a peach?

which shirt do I wear?,

other decisions are consequential

as we choose which side of ourselves to express, or repress,

who we are contains both the dark and the light,

the selfish and the selfless,

the mud and the stars,

according to Carl Jung,

Freud feared that mud, the id, the animal, the infantile,

yet who we are contains all of that which he feared,

plus also containing the stars, the spirit, the soul, the adult,

how hard it is to hold them all:

to choose the light and still somehow own the dark,

I love how well I can assert rightness back into the world,

and I also slip into harsh judgement of my mistakes,

my lesser sides, when I let darkness obscure the light,

I appreciate movement forward even more

when I notice the denying shackles we carry with us, too.

by Henry H. Walker

October 22, ‘16