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I wrote this after pouring myself into a local church, teaching various ages of Sunday school, for six years...only to have it proved to me that I was too bold, too independent, too much a thinker, to ever fit in there. Yet, my kids and I will never forget each other.

The analogies are based on events from Richard Adam's novel Watership Down-a superb freedom story, about the struggles and triumphs of a peculiar warren of rabbits.

Out Under the Yew

I ran, like Fiver, amazed,
Down the runs of Strawberry's warren.
I saw the stones, pushed into the wall,
Making an El-ahrairah.
I saw the traps, set in the grass, and beyond the hedges.
I nibbled once at the food set out by Man.
But the trickster-image was stale, and smelt of show;
The traps seemed too shining to be secret;
And the food WAS poisoned, rank with self-righteousness
On the floor of the great burrow.

So I ran, with conviction,
Out into the downpour,
And away under the yew tree.
It drank the rain,
Content, and having no part in my thoughts.
I mourned and pitied the others, my friends,
Who preferred the security, the dryness, of the burrows.
BARROWS...
Maybe they liked being trapped in winding-sheets.
It hurt less, perhaps, than sitting,
Single-minded,
Under the yew tree,
With thoughts of an adventurous future.

Learn more about this author, Joilene Rasmussen.
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