New Favorite Poem

My Life after Henri Michaux
Joe Wenderoth
Somehow it got into my room.
I found it, and it was, naturally, trapped.
It was nothing more than a frightened animal.Since than I raised it up.
I kept it for myself, kept it in my room,
kept it for its own good.
I named the animal, My Life.
I found food for it and fed it with my bare hands.
I let it into my bed, let it breathe in my sleep.
And the animal, in my love, my constant care,
grew up to be strong, and capable of many clever tricks.
One day, quite recently,I was running my hand over the animal's side
and I came to understand
that it could very easily kill me.
I realized, further, that it would kill me.
This is why it exists, why I raised it.
Since then I have not known what to do.
I stopped feeding it,only to find that its growth has nothing to do with food.
I stopped cleaning it
and found that it cleans itself.
I stopped singing it to sleep
and found that it falls asleep faster without my song.
I don't know what to do.
I no longer make My Life do tricks.
I leave the animal alone
and, for now, it leaves me alone, too.
I have nothing to say, nothing to do.
Between My Life and me,
a silence is coming.
Together, we will not get through this.

from It Is If I Speak, 2000Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT
Copyright 2000 by Joe Wenderoth.All rights reserved.Reproduced with permission

The reason I like this poem so much is that it shows how sometimes we loose control of our own lives and there is nothing we can do. It talks about a kid and how he controls everything in his "life" and he thinks every thing is happy until he stops and realizes that "life" goes on with out him, that the things he were doing were really pointless. The authors realizes that in order for him to enjoy his life he will have to change.