Wasn't Expecting That

Earth’s Tether

Child’s toy
Flying lead
Soulless joy
Now you’re dead

Beauty lost
Cartridge spent
Unknown cost
Heart paid rent

Gently drifting
Floating Down
Round and round
Without a sound

Snatched your life
Hidden rage
Self awareness
Comes of age

Dying on leaves
End of days born
You must go
Yet both we mourn

Now I stay
While you away
Your life my pain
We both must pay

Memory’s tinder
In my mind
Thoughts of you
Burn in time

Your song gone
And so I sing
For you for me
So still your wing

Black your feather
Match my soul
Last breath earth’s tether
Make me whole

Hear my spoken poem here

As a life is lived,

it is filled with experiences of all kinds. There is joy, sadness, and everything in between. I’m pretty sure we all carry the scars of regret.

As a young kid

I talked my mom into letting me have a pellet gun when I was about 12 years old. I spent untold hours shooting holes in pop cans, leaves off of trees, you name it. I was pretty responsible for a 12 year old. I had a lot of chores to do and I never shirked them. Dishes, loading bricks onto scaffolds for the bricklayer, chopping firewood, cutting grass, shovelling snow and more.

I was, however, alone

with my own thoughts a lot. In the winter time all of my summer friends would return to the city and I wasn’t really able to get together with school friends too much. So I played my guitar and I shot my pellet gun along with all the other things kids do.

A lot had happened to me by then

that my mother never found out about until I was nearly 50 years old. The sexual abuse and other forms of abuse I went through over the years left me very confused about the world I lived in. I could feel a pull towards darkness at times, and I hated how it felt. But the pull was strong. A need to lash out and retaliate for all the pain I had been through was brewing deep inside of me. I didn’t know it. I was just experiencing things for the first time as life was lived. Weeks, months and years over and over again. I was never an angry person, but I was severely injured and bewildered by the evil in the world. My poor mother never knew what was happening to me, and now that she knows I’m not sure she will ever have a full night of sleep again in this life. For that, I am very sorry. It just came out one day. I couldn’t hold back the dam any longer.

I had shot so many thousands of rounds

through that old pellet gun, you could bet I was pretty accurate with it. Anyone would be I suppose. One summer day I spotted a black bird sitting on a tree branch about 25 yards away. Surely I couldn’t hit it, I thought. I had never shot at a living thing before, and I’m not sure what prompted me to do it. When I fired at the bird I thought perhaps I had missed. But I had not missed. I had hit it square in the head. It gently placed its head under its wing, fell slowly from the branch, and drifted to the ground in small circles. Very slowly, with both wings fully extended.

I was pretty sure I knew

what would happen to the bird if I shot it, but I truly had no idea what would happen to me. In the final moments of the bird’s life, I experienced a moment of clarity. I could forgive myself for killing a living thing if I needed food for myself and my family. But killing even a small bird for no other reason than to watch it die was the most heart wrenching thing imaginable for me. Does it seem like a small matter? Something not worth contemplating? Perhaps to some. For me it was a turning point in my life. It was the day that the darkness left me, and I had no desire to hit back at the world for all that had happened to me. And, was yet to happen.

A little black bird that I killed,

changed my life forever. It gave me an unexpected gift. As it silently died, something passed between us. I had stolen its voice. And so I sing for it now. It extinguished my anger, and gave me peace with the torment in the world around me, and a desire to never hurt anything again in this world. Although I have hunted off and on throughout the years, I often wonder if I purposely suck at it because I would rather take pictures of animals. I’m pretty sure that’s the only kind of shooting that resonates with me these days.

The song is one of my very favourites

called, Wasn’t Expecting That by Jamie Lawson. As always, it’s one single take vocal with no corrections. It is the perfect song to sum up my thanks for the small bird that made all the difference in my life. And I continue to be thankful. I expected to be triumphant when my pellet found its mark, but instead I found myself confronted with my own pain. The pain of its death offered me a choice. To cause more pain, or to start to heal and be a bearer of peace and healing. I am sorry. Thank you. I wasn’t expecting that.

TheBugIQ

Poem ~ Vocals ~ All photos in slideshow by TheBugIQ