Streams of Comfort

This poem is inspired by a time when I was shamefully annoyed that a friend of mine was “copying” me. I know the adage that “mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery”. Yet at the time, I was almost angry. I felt like being an original was so important for my self-esteem that someone copying something I thought or did ( and perhaps did it better), really got on my nerves. We’ve all been there. It’s adjacent to comparing oneself to others in the sense that you no longer see the value of being the individual God created you to be. He wove each and every one of us in the most amazing and unique ways. Therefore there shouldn’t be any comparison or even anger that someone would “copy” you because as it says in Galations chapter 6, “Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load.” This poem is an exploration of this theme.

Life dreamed.

Life lived.

What’s the difference?

Falling in love with a breath That isn’t yours. Makes you an engima. Like loving you, creature. That wants to be just like me.

Passage through the dreamland is only granted to those who are made of clay. Stone copies are too dense for change.

Though the shaping causes pain. We swelter inside the kiln. Until we become something else. Now in individual colors and unique.

I could be fitted for a thousand molds. But only one will suffice.

Ever-changing, as my Creator made me. The same law applies to you. Only these temporary strings tie us.

From now until we see our Maker in eternity. The sculptor who made us from different clay.

Even as we dreamed we were one.

Alice, 3/19/23