Consolations
“The broken part heals even stronger than the rest,” they say.
But that takes awhile.
And, “Hurry up,” the whole world says.
They tap their feet. And it still hurts on rainy afternoons
when the same absent sun
gives no sign it will ever come back.
“What difference in a hundred years?”
The barn where Agnes hanged her child
will fall by then, and the scrawled words
erase themselves on the floor where rats’ feet
run. Board curl up. Whole new trees
drink what the rivers bring. Things die.
“No good thing is easy.” They told us that,
while we dug our fingers into the stones
and looked beseechingly into their eyes.
They say the hurt is good for you.
It makes
what comes later a gift all the more
precious in your bleeding hands.