Sacredness of Tears

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love".

Washington Irving

 

Today's NaBlMoPo is to write about the last time I cried. The answer is that I don't remember. Not because it is a rare occurrence. I attach no judgment to crying or not crying. Like Joni Mitchell says in her song, "People's Parties" - "laughing and crying...it's the same release".

Wild Horses in The Rhondda

This is a poem I wrote for my father.



War Paint

I remember your stories told only to me

in the darkness we shared before sleep.
Of souls loving the untamed land,
of feather and bones, and paint made from the earth.

I dreamed then, of wild places, of horses

the colour of prairie rainbows,
a line of warrior joining earth with sky.

The circle of years brought us to barren land. 

We fought, rattling like empty pods,
war paint dripping in the blaze of an angry sun.

Returning home after your sudden death,

you had left one moccasin lying in the dark.
I wept then for the endings I would miss,
and those shared wild places of our separate hearts.