Is Your Throne Vacant?

April is National Poetry month so I thought I’d share a poem with you this week. This was written during a time when I had just begun to understand the nature of shame. What I recognized was the ways in which I limited myself. I wrote this with great sadness for all the opportunities and pleasures I had missed in life because of shame, but it was also a celebration of all the things that are still possible. Today, I recognize that I am the Queen of my own life. I can sit on the throne with dignity and grace. Try being royalty today, you won’t believe how good it feels.

Regal Ransom

She was carried away

So long ago

She could not remember it happening

And the place she was kept

(For her own safe keeping)

Was so dark, and far, and cool

That she stopped imagining the sun

Or life outside the stony walls

She forgot her royal heritage

And sacred beauty

She forgot who she was

Until one day I remembered

There was a ruler

Once

And I knew she was held

By her own bonds

She had only to be let loose

There was no ransom owed

Since captor, captive and savior

Were all one

I had only to open the door

To allow her to walk free

And take her seat on the long-vacant throne

To rule again

Among the jasmine blossoms, the honey bees and hummingbirds.

The stalking striped tigers, and the sea captains and sailing ships,

And a thousand other things, we cannot measure and count

Ever the legacy of our sacred, beating heart

©2018