I have come to rule

A reclamation.

Image by Ivars Krutainis on Unsplash

Mistakes are quick to fill us with shame and self-condemnation, and anyone with a pulse knows how easy it is to stay in that spiral. But we’re called out of it into life. This poem is an active attempt to make such a movement, and to take the first steps beyond the waste of self-deprecation toward clearer thinking, and better living. I’ve drawn here on the image of lordship from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Mythopoeia:

I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.

— Lines 129-30¹

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I have come to rule

Here I don forsaken name,
and lordly rags and scepter claim.
Keep straight my purpose, like arrow true; 
take joy in your allotted due. 
May now my eyes be full of light,
and shun the dark, and curse the blight.

Would spirit strong that in me sleeps
awake and come, its ken to keep. 
Let come to me what grace will see
as fitting small a lord as me. 
Let my rule from kindness flow,
and selfless live, and fruitful grow.

1. J. R. R. Tolkien, "Mythopoeia," in Tree and Leaf: Including the Poem Mythopoeia and The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth (London, UK: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2001), 89.