For four decades death was a stranger to me.
I empathised, I offered my shoulder but I did not really know death.
Then, this year, death came.
An uncle, an aunt, another aunt, a friend.
Death came, they left.
The clink of tea cups and teary smiles.
Cold and waxy sunken cheeks.
“No more pain now Dad”, my daughter tells me with her smiling, bun-filled mouth.
She is four years old.
She is right.
I throw myself
into writing, into a written
world because it is better
than stewing in lament.
I look for healing,
searching for the weaving
of words to mend me
and help with next steps.
an ancient wisdom
or just scribbles from
yesterday
prophecy
or product of a bad
dinner
tiny words to bind
compress and heal
a wounded soul
Do not walk
through life
thinking with a wallet
What can I buy
What will make me whole
Find wholeness
in your own life.
These days are gloomy,
My pain ruminates from my mood.
Slowly I can see light peeking out from behind the clouds in my mind.
As my sky starts to turn from gray to pink.
My sorrows begin to fade into day.
All the gray begins to melt away.
The ink from my pen takes all my sorrows away.
No more excuses
for a broken world,
no more words of parting,
High time for words
of knitting together,
songs of mending.
Come to me wearing all your scars,
come to me bring the divine tears of despair
and the darkness of your fall,
you see i want it all from you,
don’t worry, the softness of our lips
will change the fate.
They couldn’t touch her anymore,
something had changed deep inside.
She closed doors all around herself,
seemed to have stopped smiling
and was only seen walking alone.
Luckily, this was only temporary,
a thoughtful pause between chapters.
She was fighting quietly,
being patient and careful,
waiting for the right people
and correct opportunities.
Her diligence and tenacity
were rewarded threefold.
Her life didn’t just start again
but blossomed and shifted up a gear.
She never mentions,
never mind speaks ill of
those past folk,
nor acknowledges their existence.
She wisely let the Dragons of Karma
destroy her once persecutors.
And whilst it was happening
she never once gloated,
laughed or even stopped to look around.
More at http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/.
Brother, I want to hear your voice
and I don’t. I want to see what
we have in common, finally, after all
these years.
I want to meet the son that has
my name.
There is another version of my story
I’d like to hear out of your mouth,
and then maybe we can have some
family rest.
Little by little
then moment by moment
measured out
minutely, you crept
into my life like a vine,
leafing and spreading,
filling my garden
with precious herbs
I did not know
would heal my wounds.