Lost No More

You stand at the shore,
no one else on the beach.

It is early in the morning
and your legs are tired.

It has been a long walk
to get to this place

where there is only you
and sun and sky.

It has been a lost year.
Sickness and plague left you broken

again.

You breathe in the air.
It smells of healing salt and horizons.

You have been here before. Broken.
Slices of life largely lost,

You have been here
and survived. You always survive.

That is the lesson.
it is only a matter of when, and how

you will make the journey back.
When, and how, and what will be left,

And more importantly,
what you will do with it.

You breathe in. You breathe out.
And again. And again.

You are filled with horizons again.
You become light, the lost year evaporating,

something new taking it’s place,
and you believe anew in God’s sweet promise,

and fly.

About this poem

I told my wife a couple of days ago, “I am starting to feel like myself.”  It’s been almost a year since I could say that.  Almost a year since the cancer diagnosis. Am I fully healed? No. But I am close enough to fly.

Tom