But to Wheat

Grind away.
Stone against stone.
Me in the middle.
A painful process I have grown accustomed to.
Hard against hard.
Heartless against blindness.
You can hear the crumbling.

Some rejoice in it.
Some wince.
Most never hear

As the grinding breaks everything it touches,
a slow crushing.
nothing remaining the same.

I do not miss the pain of it all.
I have no desire to return, but still
I am grateful,
for what the millstone has made of me,
that I remain at all,
Not ground to dust,

But to wheat.

About this poem.

I am oddly grateful for those who hurt me and sought to hurt me in life. They have made me something I might never have become. Stronger. More patient. More kind.

Less judgemental.

Tom

PS – the millstone lies near a small cabin that my father and his father built in Surry County, Va, the year before I was born.