The Moment
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
Notes
Atwood confronts the grand illusion of human possession, capturing the exact second our prideful claim of "I own this" is quietly shattered by the natural world. It provides a radical alignment with the July theme, demonstrating that true lightness requires acknowledging we are merely transient visitors who cannot anchor a landscape to our names. By stripping away the heavy fiction of ownership, the poem unburdens the self forcing a breathless, sudden awakening to the reality that we do not possess the earth, but rather belong to it. //invocation//lightness// #poetry #nature #self #awakening #july