Being inside of you
arouses my creative impulse
why do I neglect this ingress
and its ecstasy?

How I seem to need
the cleansing of tears lately!

Isn’t it a shame
that I can only spare
a few moments with you
in-between all the really important things
I have to do.
I tell myself I don’t HAVE to take this time with you
when every time I do take time
I am energized and revitalized.
Do I not have enough time for that?

Time time time
energy energy energy…

How I count the costs
of relationship
and not its treasures!

It was an evening of tears.
Not of pain or sadness
but those that arise unbidden and unexpected
after witnessing a hardened woman
who finds a sliver of grace
to forgive herself and another.

Tears of gratitude
from the sudden awareness
of undeserved goodness
given freely.

This flow welled up
from something so deep within me
it belies masculinity, logic,
or the thick and high walls
cast up from hurt.

Tears that pierce scar tissue
wrapped around the soul
from pain or the fear of it
from abuse and the remembrance of it.
These are powerful tears
more mighty than the brutality
and shameless arrogance
I witness on the evening news.

Oh how full I felt
from this unabashed weeping
as if I had been visited by angels,
innocence,
or something that can only be called
divine.

He held out his hand in greeting
smiling, eyes sparkling,
happy to see me
but I saw the scars on his wrist
his wound public
but easily missed.

We all carry wounds within
that we disguise or otherwise
hide from public view
and if they knew,
who would they see anew?

A disfigured one
or a mass of clay
being crafted and re-formed each day
emerged from darkness of night
into a soul full of light.

Do not cling to me
and our past together
instead stand back to see
the me still to be
a flowing brook
with floating leaves
and other pieces of earth.

my psyche is stretched
thin without depth
in humanity’s waning
straining staring into the abyss
of loss