Page 26 - A Qualified Acceptance of Sorrow

of detritus, not yet making connections

between carelessness – and beached whales,
apathy – and bird carcasses disintegrating
while plastic bits within flutter in the wind.

4.

Recognizing my own failure,
my own complicity
I saw that this place had no hierarchy;

all destructive impulses part of a continuum …
How easily the heart shrivels, how facile
to cultivate intentional incomprehension.

Familiar with sin, I was afraid to go on.
My courage floundered – I shut my eyes
not wanting to see …

I felt, I knew, the meaning of
the sensation on my hand before I looked –
A Monarch sat, wings closing, opening

the door shut by my fear.
Taunted by my antipathy to pain, I recalled
that all things needed to be brought into the light

in order to be healed.
Here, in the butterfly,
was the promise of transformation.

Looking out at the horizon
all around me, I saw
then felt the goodness of intention

a distant form became person,
our eyes met wordlessly and we set out
together …

5.

We came to a high wall
that stretched as far as I could see
in either direction