Sunlit, Resist: A Long Poem on Dreams Deferred

Our hopes are meant to skim the surface of this world

Pexels, Elina Sazonova

Longest poem to date! I struggle/wonder often how to find the line between writing words for me vs words for others. Lately I’ve found a wavering but consistent path in which I write something that expresses beliefs, moods, ideas I’m struggling with, but also actively tries to offer a path of empathy and a clear thought pattern that might also take others on a journey through sadness and into a greater clarity or joy, however momentary.

Also, I have been thinking for some time, and it’s quite likely I’ll end up implementing a paywall soon (only $2.50 a month) for these longer poems, which have begun to have a consistent recurring theme of addressing sadness/difficulty and moving through it towards joy. It takes a fair amount out of me to write these, and I’m nearly certain I”ll have a cadence of writing & publishing them 1-2 times a month (I generally publish a poem/week) and putting these under a paywall, while leaving the rest free. I’m so grateful for every single follower and subscriber. I hope there will be some who will consider upgrading, but I’m grateful regardless for the freedom to write and the immense gift of other people reading it. Onward to today’s poem!

Sunlit: Resist 

Do not ask about the frayed edge of indifference 
bent. 
O, do not ask, what is it? 

Eddies of brightness, gradations 
of edges. 
Rubbersnap of days ecstatic. 

I probably could have told you we were
bent for this. 
For sorrow I mean, but also for rising. 
Vaults and vaults of heavens, 
Skies folded and folded to an azure so clear 
it aches as our imagination breaks. 
Paths to happiness wind and turn through ether. 

There's a rub-old edge to life, 
a weariness that churns and churns as onion
grated in a chopper. The electrical current
of the blade is meant to overcome resistance. 
So we find ourselves: 
at resistance. 
So we are, 
spinning in the blades, giving way. 

The light never pours through these windows
except on purpose. 
Except when there's a need, I mean - 
an upturned face, a bent knee, 
a mind screaming in the dark. 
rise, searcher, from the aching joints, 
and feel on your face the scatter of radiance
smoky-warm through panes. 

Haven't we spent enough time 
huddled in the pews of deferred dreams?

The time has arrived, here now, always, 
to throw open the sanctuary doors, 
and enter the atrium of renewal,

where dreams, pulsing in boxes, restless, 
can be set free from the dreadful need of 
fulfillment, of only so much time, of things fixed
to this world, as a rock tossed into a darkening lake.

Turn, and renew your mind, 
and when loosed, find these hopes turning to balloons, 
bright colors lit in sun, still attached on lines to this world's earth, 
but playfully, lightly. No necessity. 
A mind can be fixed on the next world - 
and in the transference find its dreaming again. 

Our hopes are meant to skim the surface of this world as lightly 
as sun lights up the surface of a lake. 

Do not ask of this life, what is it. 
Do not enquire answers of the faded songs 
or the dreams that do not beat their wings. 
We have been tasked with this:
to live and move and have our being 
on a dreamer's path that ends sunlit. 

-Claire Adderholt 

P.S. If you liked this you might also enjoy: A Hole in the Roof