Love After All

Look at my body riddled with 70 years of scars
that I sanitize and cover with clothes.

Broken, I resemble earth or any one of its
family. I take my place between a rabbit
and a dogwood tree. Two of three of us siblings
move purposefully away from home and homeward,
while the stationary one grows up, down, and out
from its center, never detaching from Mother.

Mother Earth and Father Sky—that's what
I call them—embrace all their breathing children—still
or not. I don't wiggle away defiantly,
but claim my home, where Earth and Sky know me holy
alongside wrens and other flying things,
alongside trees and fruits of flowers' labor, too.

Nothing puts them off—not scars, clothes, nor my attempts
to disguise my brokenness. Let me, then, accept
this now wholly, embrace earth and sky and siblings
as they are, and open my heart to the moment's
beauty beyond truth, its joy beyond grief.
Together, we erode. We grow. And we evolve.

 For earthweal weekly challenge: THE JOY

 

My blog poems are rough drafts.
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     © 2020 Susan L. Chast