in fallibility -- a second poem

 Another step towards sharing more concrete thoughts and discoveries from my recent Chalmers Fellowship and Professional Development grant with Canada Council for the Arts: poem #2.

I'm not sure if I'm shying away from  prose because now is a time you must have an opinion, but you also must be ready to have it be torn apart. So I don my poetry dress, just as I live in a contemporary dance world where individual interpretation is the goal.

This is also the underlying theme of the poem: do not fear mistakes. Don't hold on to them, deny them or beat yourself up about them. 

Lucy Rupert in "the animals are planning an intervention"
photo by Melanie Gordon
lighting by Michelle Ramsay



in fallibility


It is time to make mistakes.

We don’t have to know everything

Who ever told us we did?

 

Birds are flying north

And flies are kissing on our glass table

And the vines still grow fiercely

Despite

A wrong word

A stumbling haze that spawned

An error

You recognize it, even as it

falls out of your mouth

 

It is ok.

 

Don’t wait for someone to tell you to pick it up, look it over,

Toss it

 

Who told you belligerence

Would be your life preserver?

 

No one ever said so

 

You cannot bully your way

Out of the box you built

Around yourself

No matter how clear the walls are

No matter how clear the walls are

 

 

Riot softly for new oceans

We will all be swimming together




copyright Lucy Rupert

August 2020

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