My father built me a planter made out of cedar
and I wept
an act of love that might enable me to
tend to the seeds of hope and strength within myself
This is the cycle I find myself in
flooded with passion, I give all of myself
ears filled with the stores of those who have
been broken, body, mind and spirit
I sit helpless, my only offering – presence
And then there are the things in my control:
actions taken and words said
maybe they will lighten the load
maybe they will bring some semblance of order
into this chaos
And then there are the things outside of my control:
whether or not she might go back to him,
the words spoken to her by everyone else,
the medication prescribed, the job not given, the application denied
the letter not received, the debt piling, the sickness contracted
the paranoia or the depression or the bus showing up late.
The judge makes his judgment, the lawyer doesn’t call back,
the rooms are not cleaned, the car runs out of gas, the children wet the bed,
the addiction won’t relent.
My porous boundaries are the reason I am here at all,
and they may be the reason I will someday leave.
I’ve yet to determine the balanced way of being
when your daily moments constantly intersect with
the height of another’s trauma.
One thing I have learned
is that there is an end to placing blame
It is a road with no outlet
and I refuse to stay in the same place
Another notion that I cannot escape;
evil is to remove the value of another
because you cannot bear their pain
evil is to reduce the complexities of a life
so you can develop a label to ease your own
discomfort
I believe evil is a manifestation,
a sign or a symptom of an ailment
often occurring without intent
I cannot deny that this system is sick
I travel between the details and the
birds eye view because the narrative is not isolated
yet there is power in the small parts too
There is freedom found in acknowledging your
small part in the whole
Freedom when one can retain their sense of agency despite the
unabating entropy
I am not here for shortsighted satiation
nor the embalming of humanity who still have a chance to live
What must I do to keep my name from being added to the list
of those who have grown fatigued by compassion?
Where is the path that I can take
that will not perpetuate the problems?
I remove a slim root from one small container
the shape of a cube, and I
place it into the soil held together by cedar walls
I tend to it with water and wait on the sun
Accepting This 