This beautiful and moving poem was written and shared on HSPconnect by James Drewett, who has kindly allowed me share it with you.
James says, “The poem grew out of the ache of reaching out about my sensitivity and being met with silence – something, I know many HSPs here will recognise. Yet, I found that in returning to my own words, I discovered an unexpected gift: the unfurling of authenticity, waiting quietly within.”
Unfurling
“So, tell me what it’s like in there?” you ask,
or at least that’s how I hoped
your response to go,
as you read my tentative invite,
my Voyager probe,
my SOS that I set sail
for the island reaches of your mind.
There within, crammed full
– I couldn’t quite risk to lay it bare –
and trust me to overwrite and overthink,
yes, there, you’ll find it tightly held
like a fiddle-headed fern,
– just ignore the assault of similitudes –
I left enough clues to how it feels
to be the one inside this self.
It was a missive bound to miss the mark,
self-scuppered from the very start,
yet, as I watched it drift
into the horizon’s glow,
I felt the teenage churn
of unrequited hope.
My memories sweep me windward,
till, again, I become the boy
who picks up the phone and dials the one
he seeks to love and to be loved,
ready to loose the surging swell
of his full-fathomed heart.
Yet each unanswered toll
beats out a funereal dirge,
where he alone has come to mourn
the death of being known.
As the chimes of disconnection
start to keep up perfect timing
with his heart’s chronometric pulse
– he knows his time is up.
And, cradling all that he’s felt inside so long,
down it goes into the depths once more
– the call is cut.
And here, there’s not been even one reply
to the out-call of my liquid soul,
and loneliness – I sense its Arctic flow –
comes to set me
even more solid than before.
Marooned here,
I continue to attend
to all the daily flotsam floating by,
and to all that you choose to jettison
out on the headland of my mind.
Yet, as I scour amongst the driftwood,
I find my message swept back to me
– pristine,
unbattered by the tides –
and as I give it voice again,
I hear the song of my authentic self
call me to a path aside.
And it’s there I find a long-coiled frond,
unfurled upon the shore.