Healing
The shard lay,
In a dusty
Corner,
Among hundreds
Of his fellows,
Beneath the
Mammoth wreckage.
In the ignominy,
He wished
For simple dignity
He could never have.
If he were never to
Serve any purpose,
Might he not
At least
Be?
The grime,
The company,
The passage of time -
Unbroken and unmarked;
To all these
He had resigned.
But that deep jagged
Crack,
That ran through his
Heart,
Spider-webbing into
Tens of tributaries...
Or the dull facet,
Along his left flank,
Almost opaque...
Or any of
A hundred
Imperfections,
A-crystalline features...
That shame,
That stabbing
Piercing
Throbbing
Pain...
That severe swirling spiral,
Crescendo curling certainly,
Approaching that forbidding
Isosceles peak
Faster with every
Pass
Around that daily
Cycle
Of realisation
That he wasn't
Even
A complete shard -
That he could not endure.
Then came the day
He had
Dreaded.
The men came
To clear it all
Away...
Oblivion was nigh,
And the other shards
Were chittering anxiously.
The wreckage
Was lifted away,
And the stark searing
Light
Of destiny and death
Shone in on them
All.
In another dimension,
Or scale perhaps,
These men -
Those awesome beings -
Paused
Their works,
To share nourishment
And camaraderie.
And a child
Scampered
About in
Those odd
Abandoned
Edges,
Now accessible
For the first time
In decades;
Curiosity chasing
The cat
In lazy circles.
The child
Sent forth
A dirty
Paw,
And selected
The day's
Loot.
He was
Chosen.
An eternity
And a week
Later,
The lad was
Grown large.
The shard
Lived among
Better neighbours:
A toddler's
Drawing,
Some shiny pebbles,
A paper plane -
Patent number
On its tail -
And a plain brass ring.
But these barely
Distracted
Him at all
From his old pangs -
Which filled their
Studio drawer,
Until even the ring
Began to grumble
Uselessly
To him that he
Leave,
Or else keep his
Feelings
To himself.
Until one bright
Summer's afternoon,
Those slender digits
Reached in,
Extracted him,
And raised
Him up
To the
Light;
Idly twisting him
This way and that.
Letting the sun in here,
Closing it out there,
Watching it navigate
A treacherous tunnel.
Suddenly they both
Gasped.
Sublime!
The sculptor exclaimed.
Now he
Occupied
An exhibit
In a museum,
A delicate
Array of lights
Accentuating
Every complexity
Of the play of light;
Those sophisticated
Games
It carried on,
All through his curved
Crevices,
Over his waves and ripples,
Through his sheer faces.
And they came
To see him;
To comment
On the perfection,
The arrangement
Of such various effects,
The perplexing labyrinth,
The juxtaposition of
Dazzling and dull
In such harmonious proportion.
On its pedestal,
Some distinguished
Passerby
Scrawled in intricate
Yiddish print;
"There's nothing so
Whole as a
Broken heart"
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/9plv7b/mayflowers/e82vo7e?utm_source=reddit-android
Posted Oct 19, 2018, 7:31 PM UTC · edited