“When Life Travels Upstream” – Poem

When life holds together

Broken hands and broken fingers,

The connection of pain.

From the open mouths of crying widows,

To the sung and sorrowful dirges

Of impoverished children,

Still can the brokenness find a path

To a certain world,

Where futures find shelter.

To rise,

Means to ride

The open waves that crest,

But do not break.

We reach the end,

And then we recede

Back along the deepest self, in the darkness we’ve borrowed

From hands made of glass,

And lips made of petals,

So that we may see where we’ve collided,

And where we’ve arrived.

For like the wave,

And like the river,

We travel in search

Of places we may stop

And gather together

Hands to hold,

And shelters to mold.