Once more, into the breach! I reworked LESSONS LEARNED This revision is for October 10 2024 Jill

[jill stockinger]

Dear Compadres, I hope you forgive me, but I wasn't really satisfied with Lessons Learned, yet.

I have reworked it–again.

I HOPE this is better.

I feel like I am losing perspective on the poem.

So THIS is for discussion on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. Jill

About saying "fracture" and not "a fracture": I am emphasizing fracture as a verb, of the Act of things breaking badly- not referring to "one fracture' as a noun.  Jill

Lessons Learned      by Jill Stockinger

 

 

Truth can feel like a battering ram

of This, then That,

of What-Comes-After.

Truth can be a laughing boy

who just disappears.

 

Under sun and under stars,

wandering, meandering,

I encountered a wild boy

who shined with such intensity,

I saw him through tears.

 

Truth can be a shock of water,

a piercing stab, unexpected fracture.

His gift of love, so freely given, was fiercely,

abruptly, taken back–so now I sing

of roses with their protective spears.

 

Truth can be a flitter-flutter,

a mixed-up batter,

a numbing matter;

truth may hide inside

the silt of murky fears.

 

Over time, my insight grew 

in the cloudy compound of hurt and loss,

and it transformed the pain

and the scar that remains

into love's strangely sweet souvenirs.

____________

In the Shakespeare play Henry the Fifth, about the medieval king of England, Henry battle-cries to his soldiers "Once more, into the breach!" In this case the breach was the broken section of the enemy's forces, so "into the breach" means "try again at the difficult task until you succeed."Feb 23, 2021