In Pieces

Eight weeks since I recoiled from the blast of injustice,

Lonely in a loft gathering pieces of my life,

Falling silently like a swallowtail wing on Baldpate,

Among forest debris and polka-dot ashes of strife.

Through the years, productivity is a firewall to reflection,

Head bowed, words flowing, lost courage to look up,

Fearful of what I might find in the knowing,

Suspecting my existence is never enough.

This eagle-nest expanse soars beyond liberation,

Honest change and transformation wrestle to take root,

Examining pieces with astonishing clarity and conviction,

All at once betraying Validation as the precious pursuit.

Pieces, so many pieces of a life unfolding!

Evoking joy, curiosity, bewilderment and grief,

Such wonder and awe at the eyespot of a Spicebush,

Settled exquisitely among the petals of a tulip tree leaf.

A devoted daughter, Wyld with eagerness to please,

Cloaked in expectation and conditional loving,

Absorbing sting upon strike of generational trauma,

Spewing vehemence, shame and manifest self-loathing.

Bearing three, I am entrusted only with two,

A baby sacrificed to the hemorrhage of sorrow,

I weep beneath blistering solitude and fluorescence,

Motherless, emptied, abandoned and fallow.

The Wine Press, his eyes, my heart in surrender,

Trust awakened by his simplicity and acceptance,

Yet true connection holds an unfathomable complexity,

And when elusive, sows irreparable distance.

Fragility pulls me toward these discarded fragments,

The detached scut of a Cottontail on a mountain trail,

Can not fracture be even more beautiful than wholeness?

Episodes of life enduring, though the edges seem frail?

Bearing witness to these pieces of extraordinary being,

Sustenance flowing from what it means to be human,

Identity, emotion, suffering, survival,

You must know I am everything but broken.

You must know I am everything but broken.

By Diana Lasseter Drake