Poetic Friday: “Phoenix,” D.H. Lawrence

Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled, 
made nothing? 
Are you willing to be made nothing? 
dipped into oblivion? 
   
If not, you will never really change. 
   
The phoenix renews her youth 
only when she is burnt, burnt alive, burnt down 
to hot and flocculent ash. 
Then the small stirring of a new small bub in the nest 
with strands of down like floating ash 
shows that she is renewing her youth like the eagle, 
immortal bird.

—

My mom made me a poster with this poem my freshman year of college in 2007. It’s currently hanging on the back of my bedroom door. This poem is something I see every day and yet don’t see; I have to remember to stop, read it, like an affirmation, and follow it (literarlly) out the door. This poem tells me to take a breath, allow myself “to be made nothing.”