"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore." (Mark Twain)
We cheerfully assume that in some mystic way love conquers all, that good outweighs evil in the just balances of the universe and at the 11th hour something gloriously triumphant will prevent the worst before it happens.
Brooks Atkinson
Eventually
Eventually it is learned that the why will not be revealed.
Eventually it is learned that the lie is all it was.
Maybe it will be learned that to love is stupid.
Maybe it will be learned that to ask for honesty is to beg for bullshit.
I feel like a dead oak being rendered: big chunks
being milled for furniture, chips
for the garden, sawdust
for the floor of prufrock's bar.
Nobody realized that there was still a green spark of life left.
An oak that wanted to survive this winter to produce
awesomely numerous blooming leaves.
My name is Barbara. I am not a tree.
I am an old-souled, holey soled poor mother alone and grieving.
I am a giver and I have been tested and I gave.
I am a poet and a lover and this makes me weirdly wrong
I am a wondering survivor and I remain broken and still strong.
I am a traveler, though you may only see me sitting still.
My heart is ashes, my soul is scalded, and they will be redeemed by the grace of my will.
I still believe in miracles. That in itself is a miracle.
You are the faithless one. You are the bereft.
I am the one who feels it. I am the one who can see.
What I see makes me cry, makes me hate, makes me grieve.
I also see your beauty. I have heard you laugh, and it was sincere.
I have been in your arms, and it was warm and gold and liquid
and always.
Always...
Barbara Bales 1997-2002 all rights reserved
Poems - Diary Entries - Impact Statement Delivered to the Court at the sentencing hearing of the woman who killed my only daughter, Bekah -
Indie Journal
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