The Cure

To celebrate the Feast of St. Brigid or Imbolc, the Fifth Annual Blogger (Silent) Poetry Reading is happening all over.

Last week, Nairn Galvin left a poem in the comment box on my Grief post and it's so beautiful and so right that I'm reposting it here (Nairn - if you have a blog, please put the link in the comments, as the shite Echo system won't do it automaticlaly). It's even more right because some people say that today's poetry reading is in honour of the Celtic goodess Brighid, goddess of creativity and healing. This poem is healing and it needs to be out there.

The Cure

We think we get over things.
We don’t get over things.
Or say, we get over the measles
but not a broken heart.
We need to make that distinction.
The things that become part of our experience
Never become less a part of our experience.
How can I say it?

The way to get over a life is to die,
Short of that, you move with it,
let the pain be pain,
not in the hope that it will vanish
but in the faith that it will fit in,
find its place in the shape of things,
and be then not any less pain
but true to form.
Because anything natural has an
inherent shape and will flow towards it.
And a life is as natural as a leaf.
That’s what we’re looking for:
not the end of a thing
but the shape of it.

Wisdom is seeing the shape of your life without
obliterating, getting over, a
single instant of it.

— Albert Huffstickler (1927-2002), from “Wanda” Walking Wounded

Are you posting poetry today? Please leave a link in the comments.

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