The Box

My body is as if it is asleep,

But somehow I am alive, aware.

Through the wooden slats that smell of freshly sawed pine,

The sunlight streams in milky rays of warmth.

My arms are their own shackles,

Unable to move freely,

Unable to scratch the itch that persists on my nose.

Birds chitter around me,

I’ve watched a mother robin build her nest in a tree across from me,

Holding out through the seasons,

Weathering the storms and snow and wind,

To protect her tiny little speckled eggs with her own person.

And I in my box, like under my own mother hen,

Am safe and as warm as ever.

My whole body is a dreadful creaking croak,

Full of dust and weariness.

I’ve been here forever,

Although my memory sometimes catches glimpses of another life before,

As if in a dream amidst a fog far away.

I need not sleep nor eat,

Nor care to leave,

Under iron limbs and a lead heart,

The free meadows that roll between the slats do not call me that strongly.

Those that left me here are gone away,

Perhaps they have their own little pine boxes and beside me lay.

Forever still, surrounded in yellows and green,

I lay here in my box, content to dream.

Love this line. Very sweet