House on Fire

House on Fire

Your house

   is on fire.

Quick—

   what will you take

with you

into that new

life,

the one

you hadn’t planned?

The one without

the layers

of meaning

and belief,

carelessly constructed yet

protected

with such

blind

tenacity?

Choose now—

   will you keep

your relationships

as you’ve known them?

Your ways of being

   in the world?

Will you crawl out

  of the house

   at last,

gasping for clean air,

having risked it all

for one momento

of the person

you used to be?

Arrogant presumption,

this pretense of choosing.

As if the Soul, 

   having sought

  its ego-erasing crucible

would now empower

your illusions

of control.

Why keep running

back

into the wreckage?

Better to surrender

wholeheartedly.

Let the flames

take it all—even

your blueprint

for life after immolation.

Trust in the miracle

beyond your designing:

The post-surrender peace

that comes

from somehow knowing

amidst the ashes

you’ll find the treasure

that was always hiding

beneath your dross,

waiting for one more fire

to set it free. 

        ©2011, Kimberly V. Schneider

                     from her forthcoming audiobook,

                    

Terrible Beauty: Poems and Reflections

                     for Precarious Times