I’m listening to the news and the suffering.
I have close friends who are suffering too…surviving the best they can right now.
The loss and sorrow.
I feel so helpless, wish I had the magic pill to soothe their suffering…and to sooth the smallness of my own as I feel this helplessness.
I am reminded of a poem my mom wrote years ago as she watched me suffer through the last days of my addiction.
How hard that must have been for her to sit with her own mother-suffering, the helplessness of watching your child struggle and not be able to “fix” it.
Resistance by Mary Wilmer
I take from the cupboard
this milk-white bowl,
this fruit from the basket,
these apples, grapes, bananas, plums.
I dice them into the bowl and eat.
I do this so I won’t have to write this poem,
tell you
how birds sing this early morning,
how delicate the new
lace on the dogwoods,
how bold the azaleas.
So I won’t have to put into words
this beauty around me,
or tell you that it is like my life
after winter’s cold sleep.
