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A no is a given, a yes you can get

A poem to my father

I am angry because
I am.
And I don’t really know why.
I feel hard done by,
and somehow I feel like there is a lie
that I still can’t seem to identify.
 
I’m not a liar but there is something
in my mind I’m not confronting.
And I can’t seem to know just what it is,
but it’s making me feel this
degree of resistance
that holds me back from moving
freely to wherever I wish to head.
It makes me be lazy instead.
 
I’m angry.
It’s no one’s fault I know.
But I wish to know,
then to accept and to let go,
because I truly want to grow.
 
I want to call you and let you know,
I  finally did it.
Maybe not in the way you’d hoped it to go.
But at least in a way that allows your heart to rest.
In a way that you may know that I did my best,
despite my broken and aching heart.
I  finished what I felt compelled to start
in a way that turned living
into an art.
 
So there may have been things that I have not said.
For a moment it may have felt like promises had been unkept.
But you see, I don’t see things in the same way you do,
though I acknowledge that what you say is also true.
I prefer to transcend the logical
and see a world of pure potential,
in which, through the use of imagination
and God given intellect,
one can move beyond the so called “facts” we’re seduced to accept.
You are the one who taught me:
a no is a given, a yes you can get.
Though I’d like to tweak that message a bit:
a yes can be given and with a good heart,
one can turn living
into an art.
 
Though I’m going off track. Let me readdress,
I was speaking of my anger, which has grown a little less.
So now I wonder if you still have anything to say
I told you I’d show you, you’d see it one day.
Though, in the meantime I’ve learnt things for myself:
at first to value the material wealth
that I had wished to reject before
just to reject you.
(Yes, it is true
I was vindictive to a degree.)
Then to follow the path
I believed to be right for me,
trusting that I was in the company
of the universe..
And through this,
I learnt to respect my own humanity,
and therefore also yours.
And so I’ve understood where you were coming from.
Not only that, I’ve gained compassion
towards your inner frustration.
 
And so now when I can say,
this time I really have won.
It comes with the understanding that,
you and I are one.

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