Direction Poem by Jewell Miller

How shall it be when I go hence? Shall I
Bear forth the tablets of my day incised
By my own hand,- in characters devised
By my own brain in action? Shall I vie
With others, emulate strange ways, and try
To be what I am not? Deny my will ...
To seek directions alien, blind, until
The early channels of my life run dry?

Let me not be a passive instrument,
Bestrummed by every meddling passerby,-
To turn me from the port which I descry
May friend and foe alike be impotent!
I would slough off life's false integument-
Then free to keep my first objective true
Strike out till longed-for shores shall come to view.
Haven appear ... before my strength is spent!