Talking about life & culture in New Orleans
Reece Burkaauthor
NolaVie

The poetic city: “Trapped”

Jan 04, 2021 • Creative Writing

Finding the paths we want to return to. (Photo by: Kelley Crawford)

Trapped    
 
A thousand times a day 
I catch myself straying from 
the path of acceptance.
 
It is so easy to lose oneself in
the this-and-that of ordinary existence
and miss the bounty of the moment.  
 
Before long I am trapped 
in a thicket of consensus reality  
where acceptance is conditional
and outcome determines meaning. 
 
The harder I try to extricate myself  
the more enmeshed I become …
 
Until the futility of my predicament forces me  
to exchange the judgement of experience  
for the experience of judgement. 
 
Then, before I know it, I find myself 
back on the path of acceptance
for the one thousand and first time. 
 
Reece Burka
12/25/2020

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