on acting out

In her book, Beyond Deserving (which I will mostly likely never stop referencing and one day get around to reviewing), Dorothy Martyn talks about the human impulse to "keep subterranean matters from coming to the surface by 'doing something' instead of becoming aware of those matters and thereby subjecting oneself to feeling or knowing something painful or unpleasant." In other words, we get in trouble when we substitute doing for knowing or feeling.. My poem below was influenced, in part, by this idea.

ON ACTING OUT

I've thought and lived as if it doesn't matter

which things will last
of what is past
or if I crash

A carelessness with means to shock or shatter

the fragile bloom
of inner room
or would-be tomb

I find within me scattered.
-
To act was then to hide from seeing, knowing

afraid to cease
aware that peace
called for release

Now ache of muscles underused a sign of growing

a chosen resting
reinvesting
slow digesting

I find within me flowing.