There is fire beneath the ice of self-containment.

Is there more than seen by naked eye?

What you sense, defies all explanation.

You feel a disturbance and you don’t know why.

Underneath the surface something calls you.

What is it you feel that sets your edge?

Is it something dark that might appall you,

keeping you, in desperation, on the ledge?

Is there not a silent courage simmering

beneath your tattered tolerance of status quo

that makes you long to jump to something deeper

than the shallow safety that you’ve come to know?

We may only have the chance, in this life only

to be and do and give more than we know.

We owe it to ourselves to give our lives for

the love we want to give or live or show.

Tell me are you holding back the answers

to every question I’m demanding of your soul?

I will offer up (so heed my warning)

someone broken, scarred and real and whole.

I am asking not for your permission,

I offer up a chance for you to try

to pull from what lies deep beneath and tremble;

to laugh, to love, to rage, to give, to cry.

 

Shelly Aspenson