Climbing up and out - A poem by Bob Beane

Awareness begins and suddenly you find yourself

Standing in chest deep dark, oh, so cold water,

That smells of things long dead.

You don’t know how you came to be here or why

Your mind struggles with the questions,

Is this all that there is?

Is this all that I am supposed to be?

Is this all that this life is meant to be?

Looking above your head you see

Something far away above you

Like a scene of the sun seen through a hazy sky

You know that you have to reach for it.

Gently reaching forward you encounter

Vertical stones stretching out to the sides and upwards above you.

You begin to reach upwards feeling with your hands

You feel cracks and finger holds.

Pulling yourself upwards a little you find toe holds for your feet

Reaching, pulling with your hands, pushing with your feet

You begin to move upwards inches at a time.

You slip down a few feet,

But you return to the struggle upwards.

Not noticing how high that you have come,

Only knowing that continuing need to climb upwards.

Not just hours or days.

Not just weeks or months,

but years, you keep moving,

you keep climbing.

You reach a place that feels like a shelf

not knowing that it is nighttime.

You stop and close your eyes to rest.

Little realizing that you are not lying down on a shelf

Something stirs you awake, a gentle breeze on your face,

your eyes open and you see

something that in all of your years in darkness

you have never dreamed possible before.

There a broken line at a distance

Parts of it sharp and pointed

Parts of it gently rounded shapes.

All of it outlined by a light gray and slight red coloring

Watching this scene as it changes

you see colors changing to sharp reds and pale yellows

You watch as the center of this scene

suddenly becomes a ball shaped bright yellow disc

illuminating the world around you.

You see for the first time, trees, hills, flowers.

You look above your head and the scene is stunning

There are the light blues of the sky,

 broken by the shapes of white clouds that are outlined in shades of pink and gold.

Your awareness suddenly expands again and you

Begin to hear the sounds of bird songs

And the wind gently moving through the trees

You begin to smell the scents of trees and flowers

Now you begin to know why you had to climb up out of the darkness

You had to be able to see and live in the world of light and life

Some people are always going to live in the darkness they cannot see the way out

Some people are meant to climb up to the light.

The memories of where you were and where you are now stay with you.

The memories of the effort, the struggle, the hard work to reach this place,

are a large piece of who you have become as a human being.