Wednesday Riff: Open Hands

To live a life with open hands,

I think must be a wonderful thing,

Risky, and vulnerable, of course

Yet also free of the compulsion to hold onto things,

Free of the stress of needing to control.

The freedom of the open life,

Turns the days into a flesh and blood poem,

Albeit a random and meandering one,

Where the unexpected is warmly embraced,

And strangers are seen as friends.

To live a life with open hands,

Must be a costly thing,

Threatening to some for whom freedom

Is a dangerous principle,

And before too long, hands so open

May well be pierced and pinned up.

But the freedom of such an open life

Cannot perhaps be so restrained,

And while such hands might hold

Compassion, sacrifice, struggle and pain,

There is also room in there for resurrection,

And the rising sun on an open-tomb morning.

To live a life with open hands

Now that’s something I cannot do,

But I know someone who lived that way,

And continues to do so.

If you've appreciated this, why not...