Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.Aeschylus
For Loren
I cannot swim.
I dream that if the floodgates of my grief are ever let loose
My tears would fill the valley
And our house up on the hill
Would be surrounded by a moat
That would keep us from connection
With the rest of the world.
Therefore, I stand mute on dry land.
I am now cool and detached
From the time when I stroked your image
On the Internet in the middle of the night,
Lying dead in a parking lot;
When I stroked your image
In baby pictures,
Asking myself if you ever really existed at all.
Measured tears will be shed
Only in my private time.
There is much work to do before I die
And I cannot swim across a moat of tears to reach you.
D. J.
The Bone Pile
Reading through depositions and statements
I try to sort truth from fiction.
Within are lies: self-serving lies, inadvertent lies, careless lies,
The lies that are meant to assassinate character,
Mean spirited lies, lies meant to be self-protective…
Once used effectively, these lies are tossed into a heap, like a bone pile.
There are also some truths,
Which took courage to tell.
I’ve got to decide which are which.
I sort through the bone pile, Diogenes with a lamp, putting the lies into categories.
Soon, a pattern emerges.
One big lie is supported by a series of small lies.
I place the bones together where they intersect.
Soon, I realize I’m building a bridge
That can span the moat of tears.
D. J.
This is the Home of the Brave
