Pain, the Poet

Those who forgive,

Can they be poets,

For where is the poetry but

In released pain?

Pain, the fire breathing mist

Rising to rain.

Pain, the reddening blood

filling the veins,

The river of the soul.

Pain, the rooting to the sacral tree,

Birthing stories and songs,

Creating new souls out of barren wombs.

Pain, the cries from scattered tribes

Reaching for limbs and branches,

Anything to hold onto until dawn’s light.

Pain, the songs of ancestral curses

Clinging to the cells like webs

To be cleared in spring.

Pain, the dead rooting of loss

Blocking the secret chamber of the heart,

Where peace resides.

Pain, the tenant evading eviction,

Holding truth hostage

From inner sight

And auric brilliance.

Pain, the dirges and the hymns,

The shadows, dislodged and

Transmuted but not forgotten

In the poetry of forgiveness

And the forgiveness of poetry.

©2017/11/07 Barbara Harris Leonhard…