Alive Poem by Skylark Woodrow

Green.
I am enchantingly,
Vividly,
Vibrantly green.
The Sun kisses my skin as I dance under the trees with the wind in my hair,
And I laugh.
My heart beats fast and strong within me,
And I know I am alive!

"No, what are you doing? "
"You can't do that! "
"That's not the way things are, " they say;
And they take me away.
Into their towns and cities,
Into their schools and workplaces,
Into dark sunless caverns with processed air that is unfit to breathe.
Is this really how life is supposed to be?
Slower now my heart beats,
I wither and fade to brown,
Still alive but somehow less so.

Within these walls, they entrap me,
Chain me to their mediocre life with all their rules and regulations.
The bleak barren buildings with their harsh artificial light oppresses me.
Slower now my heart beats,
It isn't really beating at all.
There is just an occasional thaump……....thaump;
Brown gives way to black.

In here I look around me and see grey everywhere;
It is a lifeless hue that remains.
It is not like that which is and is then no more.
It is not like that that changes, moving forward or backward,
Rather it is changeless;
Never moving, shifting, becoming.
It simply is.
And the people here have that same pallor upon them,
They have lost their color,
Their spark of life;
Perhaps some of them were even born without one.

My heart tremors within me,
And my soul recoils at the thought.
Is this what I have become?
Is this life?
My heart stops,
The darkness encompasses me,
Death.

No!
Far off I hear the melody of a song I had forgotten,
I see my homeland bright and beautiful.
Something stirs within my veins,
A beam of light bursts through the darkness,
The black cracks and crumbles away;
Again my heart beats fast and strong.
They will not control me!
They will not win!
Life fills my being,
And I break away,
Cast off my fetters,
And follow my heart out of this dark prison, back into the light of day.
Onward and onward it leads,
Past the dead inhabited lands of man,
Back home to the wild woods bursting with life,
And finally I can sing and dance again.

(2017.4.18)