Mind Fields: The Claw

 

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Mind Fields

Sometimes it takes a claw,

one claw that you can, with great struggle,

grow out of your soul. With that claw

you can grab something, anything,

to hang on to. It may be a branch, a stick,

a crevice in the mighty cliff of Being, no matter.

Your claw gives you purchase. Hang on.

No matter what. Hang on. You’ve made a claw.

It isn’t the last thing you’ll make. It’s enough

for now, to survive, gain strength, pull pull

The energy is in the claw.

Pull, up, to where the sun shines.

Along the way, there may appear

another claw, or a finger, something

left over from before, from the dark.

Claws change into hands. Then the hand

sprouts an arm. And the arm is connected

to all kinds of things, your body, now humanized,

now breathing. You pushed this sharp, arching bit

of dross, the last clipping on your floor

and it became a means for getting up and out

of the deep well where you thought you might die.

Sometimes it takes a claw.

A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good.  His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv. 

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