Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold.
—Zelda Fitzgerald
The Unbarred View
The coastal plain of my childhood stretches long and wide.
No hills to roll down, no mountains to climb.
I wondered about those places where brooks babbled and
rocky edges left barely room for a foothold.
But I learned to embrace the smooth unfettered landscape.
When the land lies flat, the grasses sway left to right,
nodding yes and no with nothing to hinder the view or wind.
The expanse comforts, reminding me how the heart swells
when you pull back the veil of fear and hesitation.
Oh, that all the world could live in such spaciousness.
Open, longing to stretch beyond the boundaries that
keep us closed, set apart.
Today, I will yield to the unbarred view.
04.11.22
. . .
When you’re a child, the world seems vast and unimaginable. I grew up on the coastal plains of Texas. Wide open spaces allowed my thoughts to wander freely.
The dull gray aluminum of the chain-link fence around the yard fenced me in physically but couldn’t hide the world beyond a tentative boundary. As I kicked my feet to push off to soar into the sky on a single slat wide enough for only me, nothing stood in my way.
I could see — forever — across the open, treeless field on the other side of the metal that tried to contain me. I wondered. Was it that environment that shaped my view, or did my mind’s eye refuse to witness the limitations of objects and people?
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