Of Mere Being

The Palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the Bronze decor,

A gold-feathered bird
Strings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

This poem is very interesting. We talked about it a lot in class a few weeks ago. The pheonix was mentioned and how it is being described in this poem. two things came to mind when the pheonix was mentioned. 1) Fawkes the pheonix from Harry Potter whos tears heal a baskilisc venom. 2) My friends dad's tattoo. He has a tattoo of a pheonix on this arm. I asked him about it and he said its because of his beliefs. He says that everyone has different ideas of what will happen once we die. His belief is that he will be reencarnated and he hopes of being reencarnated into a pheonix. The kind of animal that he is often described as. This poem took on a deeper meaning for me because of that conversation. It shows that the different experiences in life make us think and act differently but they also shape us into the kind of people that we are.