How lovely and lonely the poetry

Of pain and grief!

Broken bowls leaching light

Into a heartless night.



Silver tears tracing wordless fears

Into the formless shroud of a winter sky.

Aching love banked like seams of snow

In the high shadows of dark woods.



Across the frozen fields of the plains,

A piercing wind sends drifting serpents

Sifting over the barren stones, 

Swirling streams of hollowed fangs



Seek out the hidden pulse of feeling,

Piling deep drifts of numbing emptiness

Into the eddies that swirl around

Chiseled walls of memory and meaning.



Leaning, delicately curved swoops

Lie above the hidden depths of

Tender, aching, emptiness

Far beneath the chilling cut.



Kept in the shadows until winter has passed,

It takes until the Spirit's own revealing

That we may rise in the chill of our own choices,

And realize with fractured heart and tortured voice,



That we have chosen 

Something other than healing. 







H. Arnett

1/19/2024