Chip, chipping away is one way
to break free of the mold
not defaulting to the life you are told
will be the safest route.
Tap by tap in time perhaps
you set your angel free.

This is where the once-cursed gift of clear sight
and what is otherwise considered the plight
of a refusal to wait, wait, wait my turn
has served me well and I have lived
to tell the tale of a thousand suns
rising from my heart through time.

Not because I am any different
than anyone else, but because I dared
to drop the rigid form—or at times was thrown
against a wall, out of some place, far from
the maddening crowds. I smashed it.
Or was it smashed for me?

In either case, I set my angel free
and while she is no Michaelangelo fresco
or glory for the ages, she has lived 
and even in this small room sleeping
twisted on the old loveseat with a cold wind
seeping through the windowsill,

I smile, knowing all the while that in this
I have been doubly blessed. To have stood
upon the mountain, to have become one 
with the river through time, to have remembered
everything and dared to touch the sorrow
and to laugh with a stranger in the rain.

I may have lost my way in the world's
assessment, but by my standards I have
soared on eagle's wings, diving to swim
with the bearers of an acient truth so vast
that one questions in the moment if it is
possible to return to the mundane—

But resurfacing, no more weighted down,
I realize I am just adjusting to a lighter way
of life, learning to breathe more deeply from
the place of being who I am and have become.
True, I dream of home, but do not chip the block
when such a freedom sets me free to roam.