What is the theme of "Identity" by Julio Noboa Polanco?

The theme of Julio Noboa Polanco's extended metaphor poem "Identity" is freedom through individuality. Throughout the poem, Noboa Polanco contrasts individuality and conformity by juxtaposing two kinds of plants: weeds and flowers. These two images serve as metaphors for two kinds of lives. 

The potted flowers represent conformity within a group of people. The potted plants are more secure: they are "always watered, fed, guarded, admired." However, being a beautiful potted plant comes at the...

The theme of Julio Noboa Polanco's extended metaphor poem "Identity" is freedom through individuality. Throughout the poem, Noboa Polanco contrasts individuality and conformity by juxtaposing two kinds of plants: weeds and flowers. These two images serve as metaphors for two kinds of lives. 

The potted flowers represent conformity within a group of people. The potted plants are more secure: they are "always watered, fed, guarded, admired." However, being a beautiful potted plant comes at the cost of being "harnessed to a pot of dirt." In this way Noboa Polanco draws the conclusion that though it may be easier to conform to what a group of people deems beautiful, it comes with costly restrictions.

The ugly weed represents individuality. The ugly weed clings "on cliffs, like an eagle / wind-wavering above high, jagged rocks." Though not as beautiful, the weed is free, and unlike the multitude of potted flowers, there is only one ugly weed. Noboa Polanco claims that even though it may be more difficult and less classically beautiful to have a unique identity, it is inherently better.

Noboa Polanco concludes the poem, 

If I could stand alone, strong and free, 

I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed.

While using this extended metaphor format, Noboa Polanco describes the uniform flowers as boring and helpless to the forces around them, while the weed is strong and free. In this way, the author enforces his theme that people who live without identity live a lesser life, and those who live on their own terms live the better life.