“I Am Fear”

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"You Are Fear," said the shadows at the corner of the stairs,

Said the drop inside your belly when you felt somebody there.

But the world keeps a measure of the fearless and the meek,

And it teaches you to bury what is trembling when you speak.

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Now the toddler doesn't bury. Have you watched her? Have you seen?

She goes white and she goes rigid at a dog upon the green.

She will holler like a siren, she will shake from head to toe,

She will grab you by the trouser leg and never let it go.

And then ninety seconds later, when the shaking has gone through,

She is off across the garden, and the fear has also flew.

She did not put it in a box, she did not talk it down,

She just let it move right through her like a river through a town.

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She is not a coward now and she is not being small,

She is not a broken creature for her trembling in the hall.

She has not met the notion, not a whisper, not a trace,

That this feeling needs permission from a jury for its place.

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Then it came from Mother's kitchen, then it came from Father's chair:

"Don't be scared. There's nothing there." And the good girl soon bewared.

Not a shout and not a punishment, just those words along the way,

They landed as a verdict, and the verdict came to stay,

Once the fear had come and gone like a wind flows through the woods,

Now it lives behind her ribcage where she keeps it tight for good.

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So she steadies and she swallows and she tightens up her face,

And she hides it from the mirror and she pretends it is erased.

Now it's nothing they are doing, for their voices are her own,

And the fear she hides inside her is the fear she holds alone.

And it never gets to finish, so it churns beneath the floor,

And a bell you never answer rings again forevermore.

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"I Am Fear," and I meet it like a friend upon the road,

It's a runner with a message, not a shame and not a load.

Let it shake me, let it wake me, let it fire up my blood,

For the trembling is an engine and I'll ride it like a flood.

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"I Am Fear, I Am Fear," it is not a thing I hide,

Not a flaw, not a failing, not a coward locked inside.

Before the House of Good and Bad ever said it was not strong,

Before anybody told me that this feeling was all wrong,

"I Am Fear," and the trembling is always fully mine,

My bell's been here a-ringing since the beginning of all time.

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And my fear is not a verdict and my fear is not a wall,

It's a hand upon my shoulder saying, "Look. And that is all."

Sometimes there's a wolf a-walking, sometimes just whispered rain,

Either way I thank the ringing, it’s a part of life’s refrain.

​

"We Are Fear," though the most have yet to hear,

They have locked it in their basements where it rattles year to year.

They will never let it finish if they never let it start,

So it's buried deep inside them, and contorting all their hearts.

I will shake right there beside them, I will shake it out in view,

Till the rattling in their basements finds those doors and travels through.

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You heard it from another, then you found it was your own,

Then you gave it to the others who forgot what they had known.

Three roads into knowing, and they all arrive at grace:

From the hearing, to the owning, to the lighting of a face.

​

"I Am Fear, I Am Fear," it is not a thing I hide,

Not a flaw, not a failing, not a coward locked inside.

Before the House of Good and Bad ever said it was not strong,

Before anybody told me that this feeling was all wrong,

"I Am Fear," and the trembling is always fully mine,

My bell's been here a-ringing since the beginning of all time.