A new poem

I SHOUT TO THE BIRDS

My heart pounds in my chest, so hard that it feels like thousands of wings beating against a cage. I take deep breaths, as everyone so often advises, and yet that only makes me dizzy; unable to see the choices that lay ahead of me. But in truth, the path is never clear to me, even in my most focused and cognizant moments; and there always seems to be thick barbed vines and jagged branches through which I must cut myself or circumvent. Is this my complete picture; my destiny revealed? I will not allow myself to submit to that narrow vision – even in the darkest hours of my existence, as I suffocate with my own tortured truths – I must go on. I shout to the birds…not the ones in the cage of course, for their plight is no better than my own (indeed it is worse), but to the birds in the heavens. Sing to me you soaring birds and from your vantage cry out the directions that may lead me to a better road; to a purpose that has meaning! I will strain to hear you until the last, even as my heartbeat grows faint and my breath becomes shallow. I am listening.