Our poet is on a roll, two poems posted in two days.
And it suggests she might be trying to recover from the dismal
downs she has revealed in previous poems at the end of the year.
She may have finally bottomed out and once more is on the
rise, as she went from a theme of extreme depression over what she believes she
has become (and needs to change) to yesterday’s poem about accepting who and what
she is.
She has gone through this before, the fall, then the rise
from the ashes to resume a form she had been prior to her falling.
I should have expected it – since she always comes back to
the same place, down then up, unchanged for the most part for the experience,
convincing herself that where she is is where she is meant to be, unalterable,
when perhaps it is simply just too difficult for her to change, who she was and
what she has become, or as she put it, “a life worth living.
She seems convinced that if she really changes, she might
cease to exist.
This is no judgement of her on my part. We are all caught in
the backwater eddies of our lives, struggling to escape tides that keep us
forever in the same place.
Her poem opens with the idea that it take a special kind of
person to see a reality nobody else wants to see, and a stronger person still
to stick things out when she (or he) want to throw in the towel and give up, or
perhaps even get revenge.
The poem alludes to a person, an enemy who may have become a
friend and then reverted to an enemy again, harkening back to lines from
pervious poems about being stabbed in the back or walked over.
And while she might be entitled to getting revenge on this
person, she believes life has a way of working things out, and perhaps alludes
to the concept of karma, in which this enemy may be dragged down, and perhaps
she has no need to be the instrument of that person’s demise.
“It is a choice you have, to float or sink with the rest of ‘em,”
and she raises caution about which way to go, daring to “goad the fate you’re
given,” while avoiding what she is, and by shunning this person or this life,
she may just be shunning a life worth living.
Like many of her better poems, this poem can be read on
several levels.
As pointed out earlier, it seems to be an acceptance of who
she is and what she has become. On another level it is a reflection of her
current condition.
Again as with poems posted back in May of 2012 in regards to
our former temporary boss, she makes the distinct between ordinary and “special”
people, people who can see things others refused to – such as the Emperor with
no clothes.
I suspect in this poem she means herself, seeing what it
there, even when she might not like what she is seeing.
The next line I’m sure refers to herself when she says “it
takes an even stronger soul to stick it out” when she might want to quit or
take revenge on what might once have been enemy, who became a friend, and then
an enemy again, someone who clearly deserves being taught a lesson, only she
tells herself to let karma handle it.
Life has a way of working things out, or taking down even
the best, and she has a choice to either sink or swim.
She clearly has been betrayed by one of those cut throats the
Small Man seemed worried about.
Everything in her life seems to boil down to the basic
element: survival.
But she needs to be cautious and not to defy the fate that
she’s been given. Dare she run counter to who she is meant to be, and in doing
so, would she lose a life worth living.
This last alludes to a greater concept about the “unexamined
life is not worth living.”
This is something Socrates apparently said at his trial for
impiety and corrupting youth, and her allusion to it, implies that she may feel
on trial, and may also reflect to even her own misperception of violated morality.
And since Socrates spoke these words when he chose death rather
than exile, she may also be drawing on her previous poem when she spoke about a
glimmer of hope and her soul’s determination not to perish.
The poem may also reflect on going conditions in city hall,
where she sees things going on that other people try not to see, and is bracing
herself, to stick with it, even though she likely has the urge to flee.
The poem suggests back stabbing and such and her resisting
the urge to get even – but smart enough to know that feuds like these only get
worse if she does, and so apparently is willing to let karma settle the score
instead.
But it is clear that she is at a point of decision where she
has to make up her mind to stick with this deplorable crew and sink with them,
or find a way to swim away from the mess.
The poem also may be looking back at her life – putting herself
on trial for who or what she is, tying to another recent theme in her poems about
redemption, but ultimately concludes she must accept herself as she is, and not
defy fate that ended her up in this situation. In the previous poem, she indicated
someone has given her reason for hop, and even though she’s not perfect, she
clings to this.
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