Widening the gyre

Yeats’ “Second Coming” looms large in my past as the first poem I ever read that wasn’t just a longer Hallmark card.

Like most of those that were fed on the work of Dead White Guys, happened in college, freshman year. I’d AP’d out of the freshman level English and ended up in a sophomore-and-above course.

I was out of my depth, then and now.

We have to be beyond our depth, if we’re ever going to swim.

All well and good to hang out in the shallows, but we learn nothing from them.

Beyond where our feet can touch, that’s where knowledge, and sometimes wisdom, lies.

To get there we have to let go of center, of the things we thought we knew of ourselves.

And like that falcon, heed the falconer a little less.