This a poem I wrote many years ago when I first started writing poetry. I haven’t visited it in some time. Enjoy!
Baggage
What would you carry with you?
How much weight would you hoist off the strap
onto your soft frayed shoulder
as you swim through the haze of your day
with your full and crafty tote?
What provisions would you gather
under the chapped mouth of the leather:
candies, needles, cigarettes?
Cold solid things you’d know by feel,
reachable and assuring.
What are you willing to lose;
to let sink to the bottom, forgotten
into the deep wrinkled floor?
What burdens would you let that abyss
of worn satin swallow?
And what would you tuck away
in the place of honor, that one-off
disfigured, awkward pocket
where you stash your favorite secret
like a stale and stolen butterscotch?
Or are you simply willing
to fall out into the open world
with no keys, no mints, no stamps,
not a saltine to your name
lacking chapstick, phone and change?
Would you just walk, and trust
that doors would fling open before you,
that the rain would rinse your breath,
that ravens would bring your messages,
that ripe vines would leap at you,
dropping their medicine fruit?
And that all you needed would be there
for the clean, easy taking--
you could go free, practically naked,
bagless and loved and wild.
—Kristen McHenry
Beautiful throughout! And love the ending!!