Questions for the New Year
How do I recognize
the boundaries I have created
hoping they will keep me safe?
How do I leave
the wilderness
of my shoulds?
*
Michael S. Glaser is a Professor Emeritus at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2004 – 2009. The recipient of several awards for his teaching, his service to poetry and for his poetry, he has published several prize winning collections of his own poetry, most recently The Threshold of Light (Bright Hills Press, 2019) and Elemental Things, (The Poetry Box, 2022) . He has also edited three anthologies and co-edited The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton (BOA 2012). (more at michaelsglaser.com )
The questions resonate deeply…’Safety’ was a bad word in long-ago years of psychoanalytic thought, and I always wondered why, for I searched for safety all my life. And yet, how true it is that those protective ways that are so important can turn into ‘shoulds’ that keep us not just safe, but fearful of any risk at all.
thanks Carol,
a thoughtful and insightful response,
Warm regards
Michael
Bravo, Michael! Such profound questions in so few words.