Chosen Spaces

This is a chosen space, this.
Not chosen by me, I’m sure.
Not consciously anyway.
But knowing I would never willingly
Refuse the choice,
I knew the consequences, as well
As I know so well the souls of those who lived here,
This red-earthen basin of a pot.
I know they called out to the one that first did all the choosing,
Just as I know how I used to call out
So hard it would burn my throat.

But then that imposing spirit called on me to make my own choices, too.
And I complied all those many yesterdays ago,
Already chose what point and purpose I desired.
That’s what I always wanted to think.
When those fixed souls in spite or good humor said
I was “just a little shit,”
I grinned, too— embarrassed to hear a word like that.
Yet something I had thought was so bad somehow sounded respectable.
It made me proud, surprisingly— full of myself, even.

Do I know better now?
That being full of me was exactly what that meant?
Full of life-enriching fecal matter perhaps.

And that’s what I gave back, and in earnest.
It merely came in the guise of such seeming ugliness
That so few could comprehend the worth.


J.H. Lee
May ’10-‘11