I came across this rather wistful and wonderfully poignant poem by Charles Bukowski the other day, read beautifully by Sienna Miller courtesy of the BBC’s Something Understood.
Bukowski explores a profound human truth, that we are all vulnerable at our core and we often seek to shore up that vulnerability with a whole range of strategies and defences, some of them noble and edifying and some of them not so.
A key intention of mindfulness practice is to work with and open to that sense of our own vulnerability, to move closer to, in Bukowski’s words the…
“bluebird in my heart that wants to get out.”
And a funny thing happens….we begin to find great strength in the very thing we believed that we needed to protect and defend. So when you have some time, I invite you to listen deeply to the poem, allowing your bluebird, if only for a moment, to flutter and spread its wings.
And for those of you who prefer to receive their poetry from the horse’s mouth, here is the same poem read by the author himself
Image courtesy of Kelly Colgan Azar