Beneath the Vines

The vines have nearly swallowed you,
their tendrils of sadness, soft green
and seductive, have climbed your walls
and covered the windows and doors
with their awful beauty.

You do know know how to be weak,
how to cry from the stones and foundation
upon which you are built,
And yet,
you are weak as stones,
the mortar that one held you together,
eaten alive, crumbling,
eaten away by the quiet hunger
that surrounds you

What magic
will push back the vines
that have grown from ornament
to murderer? What incantation
or pleading will bring back the sunlight
to your wounded stones? What prayers
will reach beyond,
to a God strong, loving, and distant?

You do not know.

That is the truth.
You know the words,
know the promises and songs,
know the magic phrases
That saved you one before, but
now hang in the dense afternoon humidity,
food for the beast.

But still you struggle. You fight.
Because you know no better.
even less than being weak,
you do not know how
to surrender.

About this poem.

I wrote this poem to the picture above, taken in Brattleboro, VT. Often poems I write to a picture are largely fabrications, poetic exercises, but there is truth in this one.

We all know what it is like to be overwhelmed slowly. Finding our way back however, is not always easy, not always clear, and often takes as much, or more time to heal as it took to get to the crumbling place, Some come back from it. Some end up as ruins.

Tom