Given the raw materials from which come my best advances

into grace-filled days and hope-tinted nights,

there remain the questions – the queries in restless sleep,

the mystifications of workday afternoons when

sorting through memories is more haunting than charming.

Exchanging token cautions smeared with crooked remembrances

that laugh their way to a poorer destiny,

the torn and sad reaches for glad that tips a hat to

the best of what’s behind but incomplete.

Shards of broken passage return their wounds,

still ripe and weeping, for any chance at a future,

not sequined, brash or over-confident but light, fresh and pale

with songs not new but revitalized, like Lazarus,

his face paler still but beautiful, because all that was barren or ugly

is forgotten in the grave.

In the right hands, days in a dank cell of nothing turn even the

deepest pain into something beautiful.

 

Painting: “The Raising of Lazarus” by Vincent Van Gogh