Pain

Pain has a speed all its own.
Unpredictable, variable,
dark.

Oh yes, dark,

A blinding darkness,
Cruel, Devilish.
Often masked,
often distracted,
Hungry. Cruel.

Did I say Cruel?

Yes, always that,
Stealing the soul,
Stealing memories
of everything
except

The pain.

Drug it. Deny it.
Push it back.
go ahead. Try.

You will fail.

The more you dam it up,
the more powerful it becomes,

Waiting
To roar from its cage
larger and more untamable
than before.

A beast. Insidious,
far more about theft
than murder,

Yet murderous still,

Never controlled,
there is no peace until

You sit with it a while,
have tea, and chat.

About this poem

One thing therapists say all the time is that we have to sit with our pain for a time, feel it in its fullness if we ever want to conquer it. It sucks. It is also, unfortunately, true

I work a few days a week in hospice and have seen first hand what chronic pain does to a person. I’ve had a bit of it myself. So have the people around me.

From those memories, this poem. The tea set is at Hildene, Robert Todd Lincoln’s home in Manchester, Vermont.

Tom