AM I A NUT?

A Poem for Today - January 9, 2014 

LOCKED IN

All my life I lived in a coconut.

It was cramped and dark.

Especially in the morning 
                when I had to shave.

But what pained me most was that 
                      I had no way

to get in touch with the outside world.

If no one out there happened 
                      to find the coconut,

if no one cracked it, then I was doomed

to live all my life in the nut,

and maybe even die there.

I died in the coconut.

A couple of years later 
               they found the coconut,

cracked it, and found me shrunk 
                     and crumbled inside.

“What an accident!”

“If only we had found it earlier.”

“Then maybe we could have saved him.”

“Maybe there are more of them 
               locked in like that …”

“Whom we might be able to save,”

they said, and started knocking to pieces

every coconut within reach.

No use! Meaningless! A waste of time!

A person who chooses to live in a coconut!

Such a nut is one in a million!

But I have a brother-in-law

who lives in an

acorn.

© Ingemar Gustafson