Dragon
Saturday, 28 September 2024
| Miriam Dale
The Past.
That strangest
Of all beasts.
That is in fact, just the tail and back legs
Of the present
Which are, in turn, the chest, arms and hands
Of the future.
This is no cut-off lizard’s tail –
No docked tip of a terrier’s tail...
No bisected, disconnected, entity of its own - no...
The past is just as much a part
Of the great beast of time
As the present,
And the future.
And we don’t get to abandon things in it!
Just as an open abscess
On one of our limbs
Makes the whole body groan
So an open wound in the past of us
Will not leave us alone.
We need to heal our history
To be whole humans...
Whole humans,
Walking forward.
And, let us not forget
Of course,
That countries
Are people, too.
What wounds and sins are bleeding,
Unhealed and burning
In our own national history?
Miriam Dale has been writing and performing poetry for more than a decade, for weddings and celebrations, griefs and challenges. She writes to explore experience, theology and relationship with God and life, and hopes her poems may function as story, memory, prayer and sometimes even prophecy. See more at www.MiriamDaleWritings.com.
Image credit: Bird's Eye View Of An Island by Ivica Džambo at Pexels.