For the moment
we were only playing rough
as two animals might play
in a kind of necessary relief
of something that was beyond us.
And in our enthusiasm
we overdid it
and one of us got injured or hurt.
But the other did not rejoice
in victory
or feel superior
or walk away in a flight of fancy
or egotism.
He felt that in hurting someone else,
he might be hurting himself.
So he made apology
and asked forgiveness.
Out of suffering, shock, and defeat
may come an extraordinary renewal.
Almost every loss offers some hope of compensation.
Pain, in its many forms, may be measured
by the force it generates against itself.
Shock can be a warning.
Defeat can be a cleansing and a rebirth
that may be long overdue.
To be arrested in some trauma
or neurosis of the present:
to be encased, enclosed, cloaked in,
to carry a veil over oneself,
to allow one’s will
to be subdued, restrained, immobilized, imprisoned,
is to waste time
and one’s life
and to be buried
before one has died.
Far Beyond Words 