by: Ellen Bryant Voigt
Once the world had had its fill of war,
in a secret wood, as the countryside lay stunned,
at the hour of the wolf and the vole, in a railroad car,
the generals met and put their weapons down.
Like spring it was, as word passed over all
the pocked and riven ground, and underground;
now the nations sat in a gilded hall,
dividing what they'd keep of what they'd won.
And so the armies could be done with war,
and soldiers trickled home to study peace.
But the old gardens grew a tough new weed,
and the old lives didn't fit as they had before,
and where there'd been the dream, a stranger's face,
and where there'd been the war, the empty sleeve.
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It's difficult trying to fit old lives into new experiences. You can't go off to war and then return home without being irrevocably changed. You can't live through a pandemic and accept a hug without flinching just a little after being deprived of human contact for so long. You can't suffer the death of anything--a loved one, a marriage, a pet, a friendship--without becoming a little unwilling to open your heart up again. Nine days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, in Saint Thomas Cathedral in Manhattan, a telegram from Queen Elizabeth II was read. In it, she said, "Grief is the price we pay for love."
I find myself tonight at one of those junctures between love and grief. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, love can be snuffed out like a candle, and the resulting darkness settles on you like rain. In that darkness, you start to build a wall around your heart. Brick by brick. Because you simply don't want to experience the pain of loss again. It's the safe thing to do. The human thing to do.
It's raining tonight. I can hear it tapping against my windows. A deep, soaking rain. Tomorrow morning, I'll wake to puddles, worms on the sidewalk, leaves studded with water. And green everywhere.
Because, no matter how high the wall, rain will come in the dark. Something will grow. To remind you of sunlight, and that you are loved.
And for that miracle, Marty, patron saint of bricks and mortar, gives thanks.
