Ownership of Oneself

Everything I need
arrives not as possessions
but as proof of occupancy—
a glowing light in the house of my own being.

The pantry's shelves are grain bins of gratitude,
each can and loaf a small sun stored against winter.
The stove radiates like an obedient forge,
tempering my will rather than my wants.

The fridge hums its blue hymn of enough.
Fresh air enters my lungs
like wild horses returning to a familiar pasture.
A warm bed receives me each night
as a harbor receives a weathered vessel
still flying its own flag.

In business, ownership of self is not a contract
stamped by anxious hands and boardroom seals.
It is the captain's grip on the wheel
while markets pound the hull with iron waves.

The grateful soul is harder to purchase
than gold buried beneath a mountain.
A keyboard becomes a plow through fertile fields of thought.
Books are lighthouses.
Music is a river washing dust from the spirit.

The one who knows what is enough
cannot be leased by ambition's creditors.

In family life, ownership of self is not withdrawal
but roots holding their ground beneath shared shade.
A mother, father, partner, child—
each love another flame in the hearth,
not a chain wrapped around the ankle.

The grateful heart gives freely
because it does not fear disappearance.
It stands as an oak among seasons,
bending in storms without surrendering its trunk.
Its purpose is a red-tailed hawk riding thermals,
not trapped by the earth yet forever connected to it.

With age, the body may loosen its grip on speed,
yet purpose sharpens like a whetstone on steel.
The old SUV rolls onward, faithful as an aging mule.
Eighty-plus years of photographs become mirrors of wonder.

So many decades of living—a full-court swish

still echoing through the gymnasium of memory.

The fortunate finally discover
that gratitude is the deed to the self,
recorded nowhere but in the soul.

And what a strange confusion remains:
how many signatures fill drawers and vaults,
claiming ownership of houses, accounts, belongings, lives—
while the unsigned heart, grateful and awake,
owns itself completely.

For…

Without gratitude, every document becomes a surrender;
with gratitude, even empty hands hold the keys

to the kingdom within and the ownership of oneself.