“Orthodoxy”

This is a poem I wrote based off of a quote by GK Chesterton.  This is probably the weirdest poem I’ve ever written, but I sense that many of us have taken this journey in our lives to discover truth, and found that we were so close to it all along.

I was born in a small village
On a small island
In the middle of a big, big sea

And there I lived quite happily
Though I never felt fully free
For I was told by the men of old
That if I left the island
I would surely die
No one has ever left
And survived

And I believed them
For a time

But as the years went by
I became so bored
Of the ritualistic island chores
And I began to dream of something more
Of a distant shore

And so I built a boat

And I hammered the foundations with youth
And I laid the deck with determination
And I crafted the sails with optimism

Until I was ready to take on the tides
And to break my ties

And so as I said my goodbyes,
My father, he rolled his eyes
And my mother, well, she began to cry
And the ladies, well, they sighed, saying,
“Oh, he’s so… postmodern”

And then I was ready to set sail for the open sea
But the storms, they came so quickly

And the lightning, it flashed
And the thunder, it crashed
And the waves, they smashed up against my little ship

Youth is such a weak foundation for a journey such as this
But I was kept afloat by my determination
And my optimistic sails kept me on course

But as the weeks turned into months
And the months turned into years
Floating on an abyss
Marked by trials and tears
I began to fear the worst of my fears

Until one day, when, in the distance
Solid land appeared

Land Ho!

So I hoisted my sail
But it was too torn and tattered
So I began to paddle
Faster and faster
Until my strength gave out
And I could paddle no more
But the tide, she swept me onto the shore

So I hopped out of the boat
Onto the solid land
And I grabbed my flag
And stuck it in the sand

This was the first time that I could remember
Standing on a foundation that didn’t sway with the wind

And so out of pure exhilaration,
I began to strip myself bare and go streaking along the beach
I was spinning, singing, dancing, laughing free
That is, until I heard laughter that I didn’t sound
And I looked up and saw a local fisherman
… from my own hometown

I had merely sailed to the other side of the freaking island!

My first reaction was, “Dang it!”
But my second reaction was, “Victory.”

Because I stood up and walked out
When it was so easy to sit
And I battled the barriers
And never, ever quit
And I questioned authority
But I could also submit

Because the place that everyone
Had always told me was my home
I could now claim it as my own

This was my village on my island
My flag on my shore
So I was thenceforth known as the man
Who dared to discover
What had already been discovered before