Poetry: Sometimes I Struggle

There have been times in my life when I have struggled. I have struggled with the world around, with the inanimate and the animate, I have wrestled with stones, I have opposed the will of water, I have contested with God and Men. Some of those struggles I won. Some of them I lost. Some of them I struggled until the sweet darkness of exhaustion laid me low, to wake, to struggle again, to sleep, to wake, to struggle until it was all I knew. Then I would sleep, having no knowledge of winning or losing, deep and dreamless sleep from which I awoke, uncertain if I was awake or dreaming. I have found scars on my body and my soul and never known where they came from, what their cause was, what they signified. Some of them are small and hidden and healed, scarcely visible in the half-light of memory. Others are deep and ugly and lend their form to the shape of me. Then there are times when I have not struggled, when I flowed through the rivers of life as smoothly as a glistening otter, or a trout, submerged in dark shadows and scarcely visible to the eyes of those of us who are earth bound. There are times when I have blossomed like an oak, green and brown and expansive and ancient, my boughs reaching widely to embrace all of the earth and the creatues of the earth. Those days have formed me as well, painted my face with smiles and tears and soft visaged awe. I am all of these things and I am none of them. Sometimes I struggle and sometimes I do not.