Callings

 

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

Do you hear yourself being called

to places that are far away,

beckoned by landscapes

intimately known and unimaginable?

Does it feel as if only strangers

can speak your name?

You must leave home.

You must leave HOME!

Escape the walls of your

upbringing any way you

can.

Caterpillars do it.

Travel far and wide,

get lost,

be robbed,

over and over again,

realize that the world is big,

you are small.

Forget who you believed

yourself to be,

who you thought

others thought you were.

Become someone who can’t

answer simple questions like,

“What do you do?”

Fail.

Totally and completely fail

to reach your intended destination,

though carrying a map and compass.

You are where you need to be

the moment after you

give up on all the landmarks.

Sit down and cry out

all of your laments.

Cry out the laments

all your ancestors

feared to cry.

You are indeed walking

in circles,

downward,

inward,

along a path marked

“Grief and Despair”

that leads directly

to soul.

You have arrived.

Arrived at the place

you began

that it killed you to leave.

There is no entrance,

nor exit.

Never was.

When people ask you to tell the

story of your travels,

your journey,

of the road you have taken,

do so by living your life,

Ecstatically.

Now you are human.

(c) 2003-2019/Jamie K. Reaser
Published in "Note to Self: Poems for Changing the World from the Inside Out" 

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