Welcome to our Stonewisdom blog, where here in Venice, Florida we have been welcomed as neighbors, friends and shamans. Today’s blog is a poem about both hope and defeat. It is a story of choices made and unmade and the timeless adventure we are all on. It is meant to provoke thought and inspire creativity. Enjoy!

If I beckon you in, will you come? If I call your name, will you listen? I have waited, oh so long for you! Now I say “so long” to you.

A lifetime I have spent locked within my room, afraid of the lives that passed me by.

Come to me and share my grief, for it is a dark window to an unlit room. A passionless room of eternity spent in confinement.

I locked myself away, you see, for the World would not be my oyster. I feared the reprisals in the judgements from others. That would never do. How could I be presented as less than I truly am? Having less than I deserve? Who dared to think me less than perfect? You did.

I peek out of my window. I wave to passersby but they don’t see me. No one knows the old soul in the dark window. Few truly wished to see deeply within. So if I beckon you, will you come? If I call your name, will you hear?

When I am gone, if ever I am gone, will you nourish the seeds that I have planted? I grow them on the sill in the light. That same light hurts my eyes and offends my soul.

Do you know yet who I am? Have you figured out the voice you hear in your head? Do you recognize me as dread in your heart? Do you fear me more than sorrow? Do you sorrow at my confinement? For this room has been my inquisition, my reckoning, if you will. A dark soul placed within a dark space and a locked door. Given the open window, should I escape? Would I leave this place to be young and gay again?

I would not. So if I beckon you, will you come? If I call your name, will you answer? Will you be the one to take my place, to hold the darkness? Shall you be belittled by the solitude? Will you embrace all that is wrong and imperfect? Can you look at me and see me? Will you know me if you do? Do you see my face in your smoky mirror or are you the face in mine? I am you. I am that which you do not wish to see. I am that which you refuse to hear. I am you, alone in my dark place and in my fear, so long afraid to climb out of my open window that I am withered and old. I am the portal to your soul.

Will you come if I beckon? You will know when I call your name. Will you choose the seeds I’ve planted to nourish them in life and reap the fruits of my existence or will you dash me upon the ground? I have been here a very long time, deep in the recesses of your heart. I am the struggle of life and death. Which will you nourish? Which do you choose? Which self shall survive?

I shall not escape my window into the light but perhaps my seeds shall go forth. Choose wisely. Shall you plant my tree in the sun or take my hand and climb into my window? I know who you are, you see. I have waited in the dark for a long, long time. This is our story and ever it has been so.

We see you and we are in love!