At Day's End

A crowd of sorrows standing at the edges of my mind

Create a landscape of beckoning darkness

Whispers of discontent

Murmurs of regret

Sighs of unrequited longings

How long will they hold on at the periphery

Before moving in 

To take up more permanent residency inside my refuged soul

A well of sadness rises up 

Now befriends the space behind my eyes

Oh, the pain behind these eyes

Lumps formed in my throat become difficult to swallow

The burning, aching grief of a thousand years

Waits to burst the mighty dam still holding on.

Instead takes up its residency within me 

Becomes a cellular memory of memories

Clamped down, not forgotten

Memories now come marching through for reckoning and reconciliation

Asking to be unchained

Loosened into the winds that blow the leaves and bend the branches 

A thousand sorrows 

Of unrequited love

Of unhealed pain

Of indescribable loneliness

Of ravaged dreams 

Of words spoken to ears not listening

Of songs sung to hearts closed

I stand and release them all 

Into the open arms of the Mother

Who gently gathers them in

One by one

She tends them all

Tears uncried become the softest of rains

Swallowed sorrows become the sweetest blossoms on the vine

Transforming each by Her Divine alchemy

Nutrients for creation and new growth

The Light of the Heavens shines upon me

The Silence of the Earth quiets my soul

I surrender myself into their care

While the leaves of the trees now dance in dappled sunlight at day’s end.