Who rules you?

If God is a tyrant

It doesn’t matter who rules you —

which voices, external or internal

bear down on you

bend you to their yoke

You have no hope for freedom anyway

Only the hope of bargaining

for some marginally less paltry

slice of life

But if there is freedom anywhere

If there is fulfillment

If there is any love, any bright joy

Then something must be holding up the ceiling

of the sky

Some law must make provision

for dynamic lift

If God were a tyrant

There would be no point in life at all

But Life rises

irrepressible

and joy is real, and comes unbidden

Flashes of brilliant day

take us by surprise

proving

God is not a tyrant

and you can have

everything you love.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 25, 2012