weeping under the weight
of the burden, still grateful
to help carry it
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged family, illness, poem, poetry, support on July 16, 2017| Leave a Comment »
weeping under the weight
of the burden, still grateful
to help carry it
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, ignorance, illness, poem, poetry on January 21, 2015| 5 Comments »
You cannot always tell by looking
what is happening. On the outside,
she is smiling, apparently flourishing.
Inside, there is a terrible secret
even she does not yet know. There
was a whisper of it, but she found it easy
to listen instead to the geese with their
raucous arrival, or to listen to the song
of the river pushing through the ice.
Okay, some part of her knows it,
but she is not yet ready to admit anything.
She is perhaps like the tree riddled on the inside
with beetles. At first glance, it looks like nothing more
than a few little holes, but under the bark
there are girdling tunnels. It will be a long time
before she will hear the soft chorus
of dry needles falling. By then,
it will be impossible not to notice
that something is very, very wrong.
By then it will be much too late.