My heart ascends
my spirit chants a mantra of breadth.
If not for this encumbrance,
where might I be?

Time and space
hold me within these margins
averting chances of going astray
owed to effortlessness.

Those charged with guidance
impart emphatically:
strive for arrival at this place
stay away, at any cost, from that one.

Yes, I have learned well what
it is this body must do
and what words this mouth
be obliged to speak.

This being, put in irons
by this body.
This body, made sluggish by bones
and sinew and redness.

Chariots of boundlessness
come take this heart.
A writ of divorcement give me
from this clay.

Let me be without this being.

Copyright © Susan Love Fitts, 2001