Time heals all wounds

[kaberett]

Of course, this is at once a complete lie and a truth entire, depending simultaneously on your definition of "heal" and of "wound" and, for that matter, of "truth".

Mary Oliver says:

... to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust: from stardust we are made; to stardust we'll return. That is healing, of a kind.

Each from Different Heights

That time I thought I was in love
and calmly said so
was not much different from the time
I was truly in love
and slept poorly and spoke out loud
to the wall
and discovered the hidden genius
of my hands.
And the times I felt less in love,
less than someone,
were, to be honest, not so different
either.
Each was ridiculous in its own way
and each was tender, yes,
sometimes even the false is tender.
I am astounded
by the various kisses we’re capable of.
Each from different heights
diminished, which is simply the law.
And the big bruise
from the longer fall looked perfectly white
in a few years.
That astounded me most of all.

-- Stephen Dunn

Grief doesn't leave us, but we find ways to shift the furniture around it; we learn to live with it, with its tempers and burning needs and silent solitary reflection, and find that perhaps after all it is not so bad a housemate.

Moment by moment, in the flow of our selves and our breath, we are building lives - and poetry is a means of preserving moments.

Comments

Thank you

[alee_grrl]

Your posts here are so wonderfully thought provoking, and the poems you choose so rich and powerful. Letting go of things can be so difficult, especially when those things seem to cling to use like freshly spun spider silk.