repairing the breach


 

Mary Oliver says: Pay attention/Be Astonished/ Write about it

so here it is:

And a Little Child Repairs


A family heirloom is shattered…

Shards of legacy lie scattered across the tile

A diaspora of remembrances


The exquisite urn was thrown in anger

A misunderstanding born of irreconcilable difference

Terminated by misused power

Force because expeditious


As the combatants went to their respective corners

They might have missed the child in their preoccupation

Who silently and practically imperceptibly collected the fragments 


She held two previously conjoined pieces to the light

then gently placed them on a table adjacent to each other

very close

touching in spots


As the “adults” returned to self righteousness

Her tears fell into the jagged crack between the remains

blessing the beginning of repair.

                                                    MT



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