I walked the dark tunnel in shades of grey,
followed my friends’ voices into the day.
What is this brightness, warm upon my eyes?
No longer caged, my hopes, my feelings rise
to colors above me,
colors surrounding me,
lifting me to the sky—
The sky!
I have never seen blue
or any such hue,
but if my eyes are true
this I am telling you—
It is the color of my soul,
not a broken red of blood
or brown like spattered mud,
but soft and heavenly and whole—
The texture of my soul.
I hold my friends—
we cry,
we spin,
we look up again.
Is this captivity’s end?
A blue in my mind
A green tree, a green shade,
A freedom sublime.
We sit unfettered in a dream, in a daze.
I look up again and study the hue
My soul is the free sky,
And the sky is blue.
About the Poem
This week, there was a story about a chimpanzee that was freed from captivity after 28 years. The chimp had never seen the sky, and when he looked up, the amazement was apparent. With so many negatives and riots and problems surrounding us, a simple lesson was shown by a sweet animal. We take the beauty around us for granted. We focus on the captivity of the moment and we fail to look up.
About the Author
Dale Hensarling is an artist, musician, and author residing in Phoenix, Arizona with his puppies and a beatboxing parrot named “Pongo.” He teaches creative writing and mathematics. He is a graduate of Lindenwood University with an MFA in Creative Writing.