“Mr. Fear” by Lawrence Raab was a very well written poem describing the presence of “fear” in our lives. This poem reminded me immediately of my childhood. I think I lived a fairly paranoid childhood looking back at it now. My parents divorced when I was 8 years old and I remember feeling so vulnerable and unprotected after my dad moved out. I would lie in bed at night and visualize someone breaking into my house and killing my mom, then proceeding upstairs to kidnap my brother and me. I would try to anticipate exactly what the murderer would do in this situation, and I would plan out exactly how I would out-smart him. Sometimes I would plan how I could sneak into my brother’s room to warn him, and where we could hide together to save ourselves. I was quite the troubled child! These memories flooded my mind as I read, “Mr. Fear, we say in our dreams, / what do you have for me tonight? / And he looks through his sack, / his black sack of troubles. … Tell me, Mr. Fear, / what must I carry away from your dream. / Make it small, please.” This reminds me so vividly of my pleas to God every night to protect my mom and my brother and me. Please, make my fears small, God. Please, protect us.
Fear is unavoidable in this corrupt world we live in. All we can do is pray our fears will be small and drift quickly away from us and that the soothing sounds of the Earth at peace will return to us again.
I love that he makes fear a "person." He talks to him and asks him to, in essence, be kind!
ReplyDeleteI like the connection you make here: "This reminds me so vividly of my pleas to God every night to protect my mom and my brother and me. Please, make my fears small, God. Please, protect us."