Here is a  space for us to share with poetry, song, images and prose, our somewhat battered hearts. In creative expression, healing begins. Like setting free caged birds, we can release to the universe our deepest fears and our moments of connection, choosing words worthy of our feelings. I offer the first poem, one written to explain how a soldier found his way home after World War I-writing a journal in the loft of a barn (look for it in my novel, The Way Back). He came to hide from memories of war, but in this cathedral space, he stormed heaven’s gate and emerged victorious. I call it

The Altar

So tired from dragging my memories,
Like heavy stones weighing me down,
I came to hide and warm the small thing I call my self
In the loft of the barn

In this high place
I observed life- going on without me
Safe while I tried to bury my secret sack of rocks
dark stones stained with blood and tears
in the sweet hay smelling of my youth.
But like an avalanche, they rolled out unbidden
into the strange light of this cathedral
to be tumbled into gems
that I polished into words
An offering for the tabernacle
on the altar of the barn.
Nothing lasts they tell me.
People move on, boards and beams decay
But the words I’ve chosen, symbols of my meaning
Are released as am I.
Free to create as the winds of change blow through me
And to give it all away again, keeping nothing.
Larger, ever larger as the “I” melts away like a dying ember,
Consumed in living
 
 
                                                                                                      Photo by Raymond Lam