Freedom

Poem by Carol Alena Aronoff

Take thimbles off your fingers
if you would be free. Dance 
shoeless over still hot coals. Don’t 
bank your fires for the night. 

Let your mind meander 
unobstructed by clouds or sun. 
Make no deliberate choices.
This or that, the same dream:
 
Life’s thorns as welcome 
as flowers. Leap like feather 
on a gust of wind, float unattached
down this river of mystery.
 
Let rain move you or bring you
to stillness. You have all the time
in all the universes. Not a moment
to spare. Dance–only dance.

Carol Alena Aronoff, psychologist, teacher, and poet has published 4 chapbooks, and 6 full-length poetry collections, her most recent, The Gift of Not Finding: Poems for Meditation.