Take Back This Free Will You Willed To Me... Poem by John Tansey

Take Back My Free Will
God, please…

Take back this free will
which you so freely gave.
I no longer can handle it.
I decide without reason
and impulsively choose.

My decisions are deadlocked
and any choice I opt
is as a switch, pulled
that, thoughtlessly, kills
something, someone
somewhere in the world.

This life you gave me
to live, so repletely,
I have made so simply
a complete mess of.
Like some twister
touching down,

I have snapped the vows
of marriage, like its
very ring finger;
Yanked a father from
his children, wind-tossed
jobs as if they were cars;

Until, I, myself, was swept
right out of the house
and out of their lives.
Still, in the wake
of its wide swath,
I have left a trail

Of broken pinky swears
and truncated timbers.
A whole tree line
of long ago, gone friends
and debt, by the mounds
of dead, brown-balled leaves.

You see, such disasters
I have caused. Worst yet,
is the longing for my boys.
Please, God, I pray
take back my free will
which willed me astray

To this lost isle of the soul.
And lead me, yourself,
to some calling, some
cause greater than myself?
Please, show me that which
is still here, but no longer see:

This life, I hope, that still pulses within me…


John Tansey 9.7.7


Copyright ©2007 John Thomas Tansey