When my shoulders feel too slight
to carry injustice and my arms
reach too short to hold the world
and my bones are too weak
to carry even a single aching heart,
I walk amongst the aspen and the spruce
and notice how the light shines through
the changing leaves—such radiance,
such golden shine—and slowly
the rational part of me that believes
in doom is forced to fade.
It’s not so simple, of course,
as walking out into the forest.
But there is something there
that grows the soul and breeds
a sense of possibility and tells
the aching heart to rise up, rise up
and do the work that must be done,
rise up and carry with it the light.