Deeper
ø
In Attar’s Conference of the Birds was a story of King Mahmoud and the Woodcutter. A king helped pick up some fallen wood for a poor woodcutter, who did not realize that the man who helped him was the king of the land. Upon finding out, the king offered to buy some wood at a reasonable price. The woodcutter asked for ten bags of gold, to which the king’s men scoffed, for the wood was worth very little. The woodcutter replied, “The wood itself is worthless, I agree / It is that touch which gives it dignity.”
I was touched by the truth in these lines and wrote a poem in response, stemming from the concept that our worth and dignity as humans comes from God, not from the cars we drive nor from how well-learned we can appear. I haphazardly came upon the image of digging for dignity. This took on the meaning of uncovering the layers of material wealth that constricted the access to spiritual self-actualization. My narrator needs darkness to cover her actions. Daylight is filled with artificiality, and there’s a role my narrator must play out. Nighttime allows her to act on her desire to find the dignity that is missing during daylight. I borrowed heavily from Sufi ideology of losing oneself in the process of knowing God. Amidst pain and gore, my narrator gains some peace she could not previously find.
Deeper
Searching for dignity, I dig a hole.
When it got buried, I’ve never been told.
Still I dig. Too hard to admit defeat—
That I’ve lost it: my place, my step, my feet.
I dig at night. Shame I someone saw me.
Someone like me searching for dignity?
“World class education, job, family.
Look! Dignity is in your destiny.”
Closing my eyes, I look, for it’s truth they speak:
Forever I may dig and find what I seek
Is not in this hole, not in this whole world.
This knowledge that it can’t be earned unfurled
In my mind and I start to sink inward,
As if with me the Earth’s core wants a word.
Confounded and falling I fear the heat.
Charring parts of me as I go to meet
This great center that seems unfazed by ash.
Dear Core, the pain increases as I thrash.
I dug a hole in search of dignity.
Dignity? Still it’s me It wants to see!
