Narrowing the Path (poem)
Narrowing the Path
They came from stock of second, third, fourth best
They let it be, temptation’s shoulder squeeze (less of you, more for me)
Seeing unarticulated safety in hearing mirror likenesses giggle
Seeing an alter ego seem to nod approval
Everything cited some dense trick of the enemy
Every foolish ritual worth engaging, a sign of not caring
Even the thought of one thrown in the ditch still breathing
Even the sense a choice must slot in like a game piece
That innocents, the soles of their shoes never gummed with
That hair, that grain of sand, those things of time and place condemning
Freedom is a winged passerby too light to spring the trap
Freedom, which seems like peace, is uninvolvement
Always it had been true you could not circle in this pattern
Always it had been known that certain things you must deny
You bent in a wind and came carved in the ways it shaped you
You leave a catacomb of thin warning narrowing the path
Narrowing the Path
Heavenward
(2017, Stephanie Foster)