Courage born from necessity.
Strength born from caring.
Experience born from being present.

In my life nothing other than motherhood
has challenged me more
than becoming a nurse.

Becoming a nurse takes much longer
than the years spent in a grueling
program at school jumping through
the administrative hoops.

If it were not for the experiences
I have lived through
and other people's experiences
I have lived with them,
I would not know my own
inner strength.
I would not know that I
could be courageous.

For in seeing the depths of despair
and the heights of joy
in people at their most extremes
have I been able to find my place
in this world.
Have I found joy and courage,
pain and love.

Holding a dying woman's hand.
Cleaning infected wounds.
Bathing those too weak to help themselves.
Listening to the tortured minds of the distressed.

And within these experiences
learning that one MUST act.
And in order to act, one MUST
face fears of every order.

And in the face of fear
knowing what to do
the right thing that must be done
one finds the very courage to do it.

And not only have I found courage
within myself.  I have been humbly
able to provide the strength for
other to face their fears
and to act courageously as well.

An elderly priest
sits on the dilapidated
stair to his hovel

Contemplating once again
the stinger he delivered
in his Sunday sermon.

An attempt to strike a note
of serious consideration of
the consequences
of sinning to his
congregation.

And yet, as he leans with
his gnarled hands upon his
walking stick,

He can not help but
smile at the wicked joy
he witnesses as a

Drunken Santa Claus and
a skimpily clad *******
weave their way past
him down the
cobbled lane.

When you found pleasure
walking on the bridge of night
you did not breathe in the eyes that cried.  
You gave your heart to the dreams of midnight
all for the want of sighs.

You lived beside the cause of never
in a garden beautiful as the reasons why.
I never mentioned the winds of all your years,
always trusting,
one day you would fly.

You searched for sleep
by haunting ways that no tear
first had been. Time passed
left you singing an endless song
of dreams of midnight on the bridge again.

Your world had no time
where rain fell in crystal showers.
So in vain you burned to become part
of the skies that whispered words of honey
into your every hour.

When you found pleasure
walking on the bridge of night
you found the hand of sorrow.
You gave your heart to the dreams of midnight
while the eyes that cried,
found your tomorrow.