Your One Wild and Precious Life (One of My Favorite Trifecta Entries EVER!!!)

Blogger's Note: I wrote this post on November 27, 2012. I have reposted it every year since on the very same day. Yesterday, I was busy being a day-after-Thanksgiving-Day slug. I forgot. So here it is, a three year old post one day late. 

It remains one of my favorites ever for several reasons. It literally flew off my fingertips conveying my feelings at the time. It was a wholly and intensely cathartic experience. In many ways, I feel the same today as I did then. That is your only clue...

Thanks for re-reading with me.

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This isn’t about anyone, nobody at all. It's where an exhausted mind went one morning in late November. I didn’t question it. I simply ran to catch up.

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“Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?”

- Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems

Fool me once…

Fool me twice…

They caressed and played with my senses.

Your words,

Written, spoken, poems, songs

Were deceptive.

They're hollow I told you at the time




But still, 

"I believe in your confusion".

Looking back through crystal eyes,

I question you more,

Deeper.

Is it just your heart that's




Misleading, elusive

Or all of you?




You are a shell of the person you could be.




Should.

You appear so hollow.




Merely a shadow of someone

Trapped within yourself




Never able to get out. Be out. Feel free.

Happy there?




Is it safe enough for you?

Does your passion know where you're hiding?

You’ll glance back with regret, longing, distaste, maybe,

At your life, 

For yourself, but

Probably not.

How’s the view from la-la-land?

Would you even admit the truth?

A better question is, do you know it?

So don’t drown in tears from failures and hurts past



When you realize it,

As the movie reel plays it all back.

Premiering today "Your One Wild and Precious Life".




Sit down; get comfortable; admission is free just for you.


"Beautiful Loser" looping in the background.

I hope it doesn't hurt your feelings.




Remember…

You had choices at the forks.

Made one or didn’t

Which is a choice, too.


 

You did it yourself.

Your creation.

It’s all on you.




So what will you make of your allotted one and only?

Do you even know?

I really don't think you have any idea.

I do

For mine and

I'll own everything, too.

I'd rather look back and say,

"I can't believe I did that."

My blessings,

My mistakes.

Mine.

I will wager in pursuit of dreams.

Will you?

I wish on stars for many things,

For you.

And it's the same mistake

Over and over again.

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33-333 words using the third definition:
Hollow: lacking in real value, sincerity, or substance: false, meaningless <hollow promises> <a victory over a weakling is hollow and without triumph - Ernest Beaglehole (who's he?)