Carry Your Life - Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

Biniam Habte, a 20-year-old Eritrean, who had crossed the Sahara in his quest to reach Europe, told a British newspaper reporter in Calais: “On the journey I have made, you carry your life like an egg in your hand.”

Carry Your Life

What does it mean to carry your life
A thing so fragile, so vital
It might burst from your careful
Ministrations and escape to an
Unseen fate?

Do we know that we 
Carry our lives or must
Our existence be threatened 
For us to awaken to our
Precious, quixotic nature?

A gift, this animated body
Everyday it does the soul's
Labor, the heart's will,
Stirred by a curious
Mind—active and demanding.

Within the body's kind surrender,
We labor, live our illusions
Ask for more, insist.
Unaware or unwilling, we ignore
The delicate light we carry inside.

And in our ignorance,
A hardening begins—
Against our own vulnerability 
The vulnerability of all our
Kind. Together we awaken

See ourselves in others, ask how
Do we carry the defenseless eggs
Of others as they cross
Our lives? How will we allow
Ourselves to be carried?

	- Rebecca del Rio
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