The Promises of Birth

13 April 2026

https://poems.culturing.net/2026/04/13/the-promises-of-birth/

Falling back into myself, realigned
with the only things that truly guide,
I hear songs, I feel knots come untied,
and I wonder, can I be so small
to blame others? To think that my
inner voices come from outside?

But how deep these knots were,
tightened over years of clenching
brought down to bear on experience,
strictures that kept energy locked inside.
I see now, and I hear, and I go
where my story goes, but as one who knows
both confinement and freedom.

I also know now to receive
what my insight offers, even
when it doubts my intentions, even
when it calls me a fool. I know now
it was I who was cruel, to myself.
I know now what it means to have health,
and I now will protect it for as long as I breathe.

How could I for so long be deceived
by my own thorns and briars, my own traps
laid to ensnare myself, to cage off
the energies that make living possible?
It was I! It was I! It was I!
In such war with myself that all life
became bleak beyond any repair.

And yet healing is not quite repair,
not external repair, but the inner work
of the forces that make me myself
come alive again to deliver
on the promises of birth.

I will go out, when I have healed,
and I will make my name
as a good man, whole and ready
to love and warm others, but equally ready
to fight real enemies when they appear.