Self-Reliance Poem by Sonny Rainshine

From what do you wish to be saved:
from yourself, from wickedness,
from mediocrity, sickness,
from being deprived, or depraved?

Not all redemptions are benign;
aren’t there times when we need to persevere
to resist the gorgons, fiends and fear
without a net, without a lifeline?

Some spend their lives
waiting to be rescued,
or to be subdued
by husbands or wives

or a lover or a friend,
who’ll make them a project;
nevermind the logic,
they are trees that cannot bend.

Save us from saviors well-meaning,
and knights on white horses;
let us draw on our own resources
with minimal intervening.