Pipping Poem by Bill Galvin

One day,
She claims to have no regrets.

On another,
She regrets staying within her borders,
Too long within their comforts,
At the expense
Of what Life may offer her from out there.

Within her own shell,
In the solemn hollow of its uniqueness,
Within the deep quiet preceding Life,
She is secure, and silent, and alone.
But, the chick must use its egg tooth;
Nature dictates the shell must be pipped…
And from the inside.
For the hatchling needs to present itself,
Rumpled and awkward, to the world,
With its emergent vulnerability,
To accept the discomforts that Life conveys;
Then, to learn and adjust and acclimate;
To discover and enjoy the simple pleasures
That breathing this air engenders.

But, will the new bird be one wild and free…
Or, flightless, living in just one more cage?
Will she be exchanging one longing,
One suffering, one yearning, for another?

She looks about…

Life is nothing more, and is nothing less,
Than what we make it out to be.


September,2016 (written after a decades-long intermission,
reacquainting myself with the Existentialist writings
of Camus, Sartre, and Kierkegaard)