Shelter

A poem

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

It is uniquely human
to refuse the star quilt of
naked night in exchange
for shelter —
not from the elements,
but from inconvenience;
not for safety,
but for control.

The first utterance
of inside
and outside
was the moment
of man’s fall; now we
pot plants,
lament about rooms
without sufficient light,
wage war against soil bugs
and the unwanted furry
and hungry, yet some
we accept, and
provide for them upholstered
terrariums of plenty and
predictability.

Still we are unable
to escape our longing
for moonlight,
for unpiped water,
for curtains of green, so
we bring the outside elements
inside, and hang them on our walls,
a dutiful act of worship to some —
a curious attempt at control
to those who learned
(remembered)
there is nothing to have
in this life.

Shelter and salvation
cannot be built —
peace is wet wings
escaping a cocoon of safety,
as if flight, and the wild,
and birth, and holy
origin were things
to which we returned,
not constructed.