The arrow’s course shows the curve of the world.
arrow
release it
let it all go
everything you ever wanted
everything you never got
release it into the wind
leave it out to wash away with the rain
watch it float away on the tide
see it decompose into mulch
with the leaves and the bugs.
you can’t hold any of it.
we don’t own anything
we don’t get to keep anything
not love or money
not friends or enemies
and certainly not
time.
my life will become
someone else’s life
my memories will become
someone else’s memories
even my face will become
someone else’s face
sooner or later.
someday I’ll be a fish again
and I won’t remember
the taste of a hook in my mouth.
someday I’ll be a baby again
trying to stand for my first time
falling down and getting up
over and over til I get it right.
someday I’ll be a tree stump again
nothing left of me but my roots
watching the other trees rise and fall
slowly fading to dust and dirt.
someday an arrow will take me down
pierce my heart
empty my life
finish me
and when it does
I’ll be an arrow again
the arrow that pierces
someone else’s heart.
Copyright © 2008 by Rick Belden. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
—Photo credit: Thunderchild7/Flickr
About Rick Belden
Great poem Rick. The issue of letting go of all attachments is so important and so difficult. Carrying around unfinished business makes it tougher but even without old baggage the work of releasing our attachments is mammoth and accomplished by so few. I remember when I was working with dying people how this was a struggle for them and for those around them. Wouldn’t it be so much better if we could let it go before that? Great poem!
Thanks, Tom. This poem is, for me, probably the most comforting thing I’ve ever written. It’s the piece I like to revisit when I feel the most troubled. It reminds me that anything that might be weighing on me, no matter how big it feels, is truly impermanent. It helps put me in a frame of mind that sometimes, when I’m fortunate, allows me to let go of everything, if only for a fleeting moment or two. Those brief experiences of timeless, weightless freedom are about as close as I’ve probably ever come to being in what might be called a state of grace. They reopen my heart and my lungs and help me carry on when it all seems like too much, and I love them.