It seems as late, I am compelled to writing stories. Maybe it’s the look in my daddy’s eyes when he’s telling me something I didn’t know already, or maybe I’m coming to understand that it’s something I do well, and that poetry need not be lost in the process.

I’ve discovered is that I don’t need to create an imaginary world to write. I have the world already, and stories that I’ve often worried to – that they would disappear completely if someone (if I) didn’t write them down.

You see, I love the story. I want to know the why of everything. I refuse to chalk off violence or ignorance as just poor breeding or insufficient laws. It’s impossible to ever truly understand, to truly know compassion if you don’t know the story of how someone (anyone) got to the place they are, how they come to a crossroads where the choices were so blurry (and perhaps so few).  I want to know because every story is in some part my own.

Do I know you?

I watch the news and hear the latest details of a killing, a beating, a thoughtless remark…….and know there’s more to the story – a betrayal, a loss, an act that seems beyond reach of forgiveness. And yet, as a rule, society cares not much for the why; with most attention focused on who – who can we blame? Maybe if we spent a little more time understanding, there would be less that needed fixing. If our sympathies extended beyond others just like ourselves, then maybe we could become part of something more than a temporary distraction – a moment of outrage.

A moment beyond the moment in which we’ve forgotten.

I will listen.

Instead, reporters tell us the same thing over and over (we must have someone to blame). We hurt for the victims of senseless violence, and yet cannot see that we are all victims. Most perpetrators have family, people who love them, people who will struggle with survival in the world of ‘after’. Do we grieve for them, or are we much more selective with our compassion, identifying only with the survivors we recognize? Do we grieve for the soul that was so lost as to think this was really an answer?

Who let go?

It makes us angry, when it should make us sad. “Every man’s death diminishes me.” Every story becomes a part of my own, every sorrow, a memory mine.

which way
the beginning –
was a moment in time
when love
found a way
through the dark
forsaken the promise
would take them to home
and a light
on the porch
burning still

walking and wearing
boots into dust
the wringing of wrinkled
these hands
are emptied by losing
each innocence come –
by way of the path
we’ve forgotten
to watch

. . .