Better than Healing

You cut the shoot, and wonder
at the lush greenness
under it’s dead grey bark,
the life under the wound,

knowing the agony
of losing part of your life,
having it cut from you,
remembering

how you dripped pain,
how the lopped limb of love
shriveled and died, was put aside
to be burned like a sacrifice on the altar.

The vine will heal as you healed,
the harsh cut will harden,
it’s scar evident, protection
against similar cuts

at least in this one place.
But you know this too,
that this one cut will spur something
better than healing:

growth.

The pain will push the damp lifeblood
from the plant’s deep rooted foundations
and force new life, new directions,
a plethora of new shoots,

that will bloom in summer’s heat,
vibrant, colorful, beautiful,
and impossible
without the pain of this one cut.

About the poem

This picture is of some forsythia cuttings I made not long ago, rooting in my kitchen window. Ideally I would have shot new growth on a bougainvillea vine on my front porch, but alas, that one does not seem to have survived the winter.

But the death of my beautiful bougainvillea doesn’t change the principle, that sometimes the things we lose, or the things we have torn from us, spur not just healing, but growth. It is not without pain or scars, but it gives that pain… meaning.

Tom