Tetherball
All things move in circlesAll our ceremonies, planets, solar systems,The universal arc bending toward justiceAs sundancers tethered around their tree pray for ongoing spirals of lifeSongs and pain whirl sun-wise around the center pole of creationAnd return to our MakerBut all magic comes in shades andAll medicine can be poisonAnd all ceremonies can be deadlyDeadly if you stand at the center pole of your worldPlaying tetherball with pathologyRaising back a fist and striking at your own hard inflated despairBound by the cord of family bloodSwinging in a circle around daddyGuiding the sent missile at meAnd mom cheers on her little tetherball warrior princessWhile scoping horizons for silhouettes of imagined bogeymen While pain whirls sun-wise around the center pole of daddyAnd returns to its maker
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Very creative good deep writing. Happy to see the smiling face:)
Wow.. just... wow. Very powerful and very true with a very strong message. It\'s true the world does have a cycle effect, everything about it that I can think of seems to. Maybe it\'s just my life experience but it seems things go in cycles. And, on a larger scale, so does the majority of things around me. Seasons, even life and death. It\'s interesting. I really like this piece. I see you need prayer by your status, may I ask what\'s up?
Matt this poem is so amazing and powerful. I agree too about things going in cycles. I think it is such a cool metaphor for you to use tetherball and connect it to how the planets move and how ceremonies are circular. I think it\'s interesting how you say (at least in my interpretation) that Family blood ties you to someone else\'s despair.
Although someone in your family may be suffering with their own despair, I would think that the despair is not purposely guided at you. I am disappointed in myself to say that much of my despair and hardship I take out on Brian. And I am wrong for that. But the despair and hardship is not caused by Brian. And it is important to me that he knows that. And I am trying very hard to not let my tetherball be struck at him anymore.
Here for you if you want to talk about what\'s going on. I am still praying for you. I am sorry that you are in pain. I am here. I cannot take away the pain, but maybe I can help you with it, like you have helped me so many times.
Hoping your days start getting better. *hugs*
I get that Matt. Very good.
That was pretty awesome...miss you...
Tracie
\"....songs and pain whirl sun-wise around the center pole of creation and return to our maker.\"
God hears it all - the pleasant, and the painful - none of it is lost on our Creator. Not a distant, vapor of our imagintions, but - tangible, and listening; caring.
\"All magic comes in shades.....\"
There are degrees to miracles.
\"all medicine can be poison...\"
In the proper amounts, even poisons work for our good...(Warfarin (rat poison) = Coumadin (blood thinner), conversely - too much of a good thing can kill.
\"all ceremonies can be deadly\"
hmmmmm. I have to reach for this one, even though you go on to define it. My take; a ceremony is only as effective as the person participating in it. In the right frame of thought, a ceremony can hold great significance for the participant. But, like all things, it is symbolic in it\'s ability to DO a thing for us. The THING we hope for a ceremony to accomplish is not held in the ceremony itself, but deep within us.
\" pathology....\" Holds much meaning in the medical context - benign....malignant...good vs bad...and even pathology of undetermined behavior...this, the most troublesome. With a malignancy, at least you KNOW the fight ahead...\'undetermined behavior\' leaves us with the question..the fear...the uncertainty of what lies ahead.
\"...hard inflated despair...\"
I can FEEL this. I KNOW this one firsthand. A life so pregnant with despair that there isn\'t room for more. Yes, this is a thing I have felt....but, in this \'game\'...in the game of tetherball, that despair, when batted away, will assuredly return to you, with force equal to that expended to bat it away - except, as it returns, it comes to us from behind....unless we are watchful, we will not see it coming. We cannot just beat at it and watch it leave us, we must turn toward it, and see it coming from behind us, and make a choice. We must choose either to strike at it again, in a futile attempt to rid ourselves of the despair, or, we must let it play out on it\'s own, with no aid from us for it\'s power. When left alone, it will slowly diminish in it\'s intense travel around our core...and it will drop from the heights it attained while \'in play\', and wind it\'s way down - to stillness.
\"bound by the cord of family blood, swinging in a circle around daddy, guiding the sent missile at me\"
Again...I have to think...this is a relational \'battle\', a battle of sorts where the center of all things is daddy, and daddy recognizes responsibility for family and all that that responsibility entails, spoken, and unspoken - much responsibility felt and supposed as coming from an outside source...but quite possibly, simply daddy\'s own mindset of what is his \'duty\' to those he cares for.
\"and mom cheers....while scoping horizons....\"
The maternal role of engaging the family in hopeful activities, while she also is furiously in the \'protection mode\'...the mother\'s role of keeping a family happy, and safe.
\"while pain whirs sun-wise around the center pole of daddy and returns to it\'s maker\"
Daddy, caught in the painful duty of \'holding it all together\' for those he loves and is responsible for, sends his prayers to his Maker, as he makes every attempt to maintain the family, while he feels the burdens of life, yet stands firm in the shadow of his Creator, the center of his family.
Okay, this was MY take....I hope I wasn\'t too far off. I hope I didn\'t read too much into this beautiful poem. This is good. They say creativity is borne of difficulty. I wish we could all be a little less creative at times.
Wow Leitha, that is a wonderful interpretation of the poem! You put a lot of deep thought into it. You gave a totally different perspective from what I see in it. I love that!
Okay...that was the positive take on an expression of a very negative experience....but, poetry is universal, right? I mean, we read it and find oursleves \'there\'. I am hopeful thses words release some of the pain, and that the missiles fall far short of their mark.