creative ramblings & reverie

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Compassion

Somehow I'd imagined
compassion enough
to go around—thinking

it would be given readily
by all, tawny and full of light
like the sage honey
I found Friday for a friend

it would be worn next to the skin,
like the blue agate beads
strung for me by a Polish artist
in mountains across the world

it would accompany the needy,
shaggy and immense
like the Great Pyrenees we've met,
the service dog who attends
every local opera from Puccini
to The Pirates of Penzance.

Instead,
this pitiless wing shadow
that has been cast over us.

This staggering
absence and desecration

that I must nevertheless
take up and hold
against my raw-chafed skin,
gently as possibility,
as any broken thing.

—Christie