Carol for the Wild Heart

Carol for the Wild Heart

Let what is wild
in us remain so,
and in the world, too;
taming mutes instinct
and gift, subdues
the agrestal impulse, rejects
and rots the medicine
we came to be and share,
we, aflame with wild hearts
smother them, dousing
our wild fires, darting to
cages,
cages on wheels,
cages of glass,
of hallways
and rooms
where we pace
and plot,
we scheme
and devour,
we survive
through the fitness
of messages crafted
in sighs selling
lies, conforming
our wild desires, our wild lives
to dreary patterns, controlled;
we have made ourselves
ill,
tamed, trapped, and dying;
how strange, an animal choosing
its cages and searing itself with
brands, moving
from cage
to dulling cage
each fashioned,
by the very creature
bolting the door, who
every year, in the time
of dark and ice, lights
fires and listens to
its yearning heart
howling at the moon
howling through
stars and time
in songs and voices
finally its own,
howling
the uncaged
wild inclinations
to heal
to grow
to love
wildly,
to resist
cages.

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