to believe in things that seem frail
a free verse poem for Crucible: the stone womb of elderhood
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“She captured my heart from the moment I first saw her, battered and leafless, on the cusp of a still-frosty spring.” — Sharon Blackie, Hagitude
It’s taken this long to taste the hurt hidden in something new.
But this is the only medicine now
as the cosmic pulse quickens. Sweet tea
takes hours to let go in the hot sun, release bitterness
for the right flavor. Do you remember that roadside motel
where we stood in the shower until the hot
water ran out? The room filling with steam before we
even touched each other. A sudden spring storm
piled snow outside our window. We were the last ones
to leave when the sun came out. Souls stir with crystals
of wonder when seeing something for the first time. Tiny creatures
and stars above, gleam. In the beginning it is so easy to believe
in things that seem frail. Why has our wondering
muscle grown weak? We so easily stack small boulders
of what we are sure of all over the place, we forget
to look each other in the eye, we miss the generosity
of time sitting on the front porch drinking tea
with strange kin, amidst the beauty of graves
not so far away. I had to get old to find treasure
in the gnarled hands of familiar and ordinary things. Who hasn’t
stood at an unbarred window and looked for pleasure
that’s grown large and unmanicured? I want to
get down on my knees before you and the wild
horses that still roam these lands and believe in things as they are.
Remember what it is like to be on the receiving end
of how vast the world is, how unlike our ideas
of how it should be it often is
This poem is the sixteenth a series titled, Crucible: the stone womb of elderhood, a poetic collaboration for National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) with Samantha Wallen and Michelle Puckett.
To read the previous poem click HERE. To read the next poem in the series click HERE
Samantha Wallen, MFA is a poet, writer, & writing guide who offers writing circles, workshops, private mentoring, and retreats for writers & want-to-be writers. Her work seeks to restore the soul of our world, and to render the complexity and fullness of our situations without easy judgment.
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