It is the off season and you are here.
Foorprints in the sand indicated others have been here too,
but not now. The sand is yours and you walk
in the surprising winter sun.

This is what you came for, the emptiness,
expanses without a soul but your own.
Empty sky and empty shore, A sea between them,
just as empty. You can cry here. No one sees,

No one notices. There is no one to ask why.
No one to interrupt your bleeding of sadness
in need of explanation. Just you and the God who knows
that blood and pain is the path to healing.

He lets you be. Allows you to be lost, broken, overcome
without interruption. Lets you bleed out the darkness.
It is an inhuman kind of love, letting be.
and so, you walk. You walk until your old legs ache.

That is how you know you are making progress,
when you ache. Legs. Spirit. Soul.
It is not age or distance.
It is the pain of healing,

a glorious thing, this pain, spilling over itself
without any need to function, to contain it,
to manage it. Allowed to suffer completely
until, one, two days of this, you are empty,

if not healed, at least without darkness. Empty.
Able at least to make room for the odd winter sun
and let it’s warmth seep into your bones,
healed by a good dose of nothingness.

About this poem

I just spent a couple of days at Cape Cod. In WInter there is no one there to speak of. Perfect.

There’s a lot of people out there who fight things like depression and anxiety. Most folks have no idea how hard we all work to seem “normal” and how tiring it all is. A couple of days of surrender without that work is amazingly healing. I am blessed with a wife who gets it, sends me on my way when she sees the need. And I am blessed to have just enough to run away once or twice a year like this.

Life is good.

Tom