Here are two examples of my own poems of transformation both written as I was considering prompt ideas for week 3 of Writing From The Inside Out. Cabin Fever, written on Saturday, April 18, 2020 is an example of what David Whyte calls the poetry of self-admonition, which he describes occurs when you give yourself a good talking to, but from your best self. I wrote A Shy Eagerness on April 19, 2020.

A Shy Eagerness

I see limbs stretching upward
and the first small, shy buds
of rose at the finger tips
eager to harvest the sunlight
after the long, patient, quiet
work, through the winter,
in the womb of the earth.

I see this through the eyes
of my own hesitancy,
my desire to trust something
I cannot name, my will to believe
in the nascency of a new life while
all the aches of my aging body
sing to another season.

The bouquet of flowers I bought
a week ago withered. I gave them
back to the earth with my own hands,
with a silent prayer that the gift
of their fading colors could be
a redemption or a sacrificial offering
to hush myself into a vibrant shy eagerness
for all the seasons that remain.

Then I sat quietly, my eyes closed,
and lifted my face toward the sun.

© Nick LeForce, All Rights Reserved

Cabin Fever

Don’t gloss over the moment
you realize you’re too closed in,
when you get a whiff of cabin fever
from a life lived too small.

You could pass it off like you would
a slight shiver in the crisp morning air
quickly dispelled by another layer of clothing.
Even this pandemic is surely a passing thing,
an interruption to normal. No matter
how many times you shrug off the noticing,
or aim back to the life you once lived,
or cry fowl at injustice, you cannot
stop the earth from quaking.

If you can shake the spell and
hang on at that moment, you can
feel the fault line crack wide open
and you will see how color
comes to rest in things, how
the sky lives under a glass roof,
and how precious a wounded bird
is the heart.

In that few seconds of the lucid dream,
you can change the compass of your life.
You can push your beak head out through
the rift and force yourself to climb
into the light — or you could stay,
eyes shut against the shiver,
until you secretly die in the shell
not knowing you had another choice.