Rev. Meghan Reinhart recently shared the following poem in several Awakening Together programs, including Discovering the Artist’s Way and Living the Undefended Surrender Experiment.
Listeners spoke of the deeply profound impact of Meg’s words, and several asked if the poem could be made available in writing so they could spend more time with it.
With gratitude to Meg for giving us permission to share her work, we are honored to publish it here.
crazy, with teeth
i was not crazy
i was a cathedral
with its roof on fire
trying to pass
as a teacup
i was not unstable
i was the red mathematics
of a star
misfiled under
woman / combustion / inconvenient
and yes
i have been angry
not table-flipping angry
not little knife angry
not gossip-with-lipstick angry
older
granite angry
lava remembering
it was once
the interior of God
i have smiled
like a well-behaved vase
while thunder
chewed through my wrists
i have said fine
with a mouth full
of comets
i have made myself
legible
to furniture
but the possible
does not arrive politely
it kicks the hinge
off the noun
it says
your life is too small
for the animal
of light
inside your ribs
it says
stop calling me madness
just because i refuse
to wear the uniform
of your previous disappointment
o bright ridiculous
unhouseable thing
o divine buffalo
in the porcelain mind
o golden vandal
spray-painting YES
on the inside
of my skull
i know you now
you are not here
to ruin me
you are here
to remove
the taxidermy
from my oxygen
so let the little self
clutch its tiny clipboard
let it measure the ocean
with a spoon
let it ask
is this appropriate
is this marketable
is this safe
is this sane
while i become
the barometric animal
of the Infinite
while i bite through
the leash
of almost
while i laugh
with my whole
incorrect soul
because crazy
is only possibility
before the village
has invented
a fence for it
because anger
is sometimes
the angel
arriving without feathers
because God
does not always whisper
sometimes God
throws a chair
through the painted window
and calls it
mercy
— Rev. Meghan Reinhart 𓆉
Published with the author’s permission.