Find your own way, A way that is kind.
A maze looms up,
a myriad of walls
blocking every turn.
How do we escape?
The rat finds his way,
quickly and with ease.
Clever, innovative,
he scurries and skritches
Down narrow alleys,
climbs tall walls,
swims dark streams, for days,
near blind. Like justice.
Or karma? We see into
The shade and shadow
of ourselves, the way we live,
the choices we make.
Rat’s tail is long,
a balance and antennae.
sensing and sending
to what lives in the dark.
In half-sighted vision, his tail goes
to what his mind knows.
catching the drift of the invisible
He divines probabilities.
Clever, conniving, cunning,
running a fast pace race,
Picking out tricks from his rat top hat,
Magically changing lead into gold
Rat hitches a ride on Ox’s horns,
jumps onto the riverbank’s path well worn
runs heater skelter as only rat can.
wins the race by a sleight of hand
A friend in need is a friend indeed;
Rat sent his friends on errant paths.
Trust is not something pulled out of a hat;
Trust must be earned in the year of the Rat,
Thus Father Rat is first in line
while Mama Ox, matriarch sublime,
clears the way, picks up the pieces,
before what’s left of the old year ceases.
In his wake, Rat leaves shredded scraps —
newspaper, letters, photos, and maps
sheddings of the old year left behind.
Nostalgic Ox re-members, just to re-mind
Stashing bits of shiny metal,
Rat calculates what to forge,
a blade or a bowl? a knife or a spoon,
the shelter of home? Or, the edge of doom.
No need to travel
Rat’s well-worn way
Your path is unique;
With new words to say.
Don’t listen to others,
make up your own mind
Find your own way
A way that is kind.
If we climb every wall,
peer over the top
we find there’s nothing
to make us stop.
Marylyn Motherbear Scott
Chinese New Year, January, 2020
This writing is the intellectual property of the author, Marylyn Motherbear Scott. For permission to share, please just ask and give credit to her as author. If you wish publish,
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