Poem: The Cocoon between what crawls and what flies

(title of a Thomas Merton Journal Entry)
by cousin.of.zuzu

I refuse to go back to crawling.
I am terrified of being seen flying.
So I live in a cocoon, a holding environment.
The cocoon between what crawls and what flies.

And when I feel it coming off, I pull it back around me.
And when people tell me how to fly, and where to fly,
Or that I can’t fly forward, or should fly backward.
I go still, and pull the cocoon around me.

And then I rumble and grrrrr.
Angry, still, glaring at the world.
Because they keep me from flying
But do they? And I get even stiller and pull the cocoon around me.

But the damn thing won’t stay on!
My wings are fully developed
I am bigger than the cocoon can hold
I have to face the vulnerability and judgment of the sky.

No. I’m not ready, I don’t want to.
But cocoons are not meant to be forever
And there are too many living-dead already
In cocoons between what crawls and what flies

So I’ll snuggle in one more day and maybe tomorrow
I’ll think about, thinking about, leaving
the cocoon between what crawls and what flies.