A poem

a poem written by someone familiar to all of ye...i really liked it and thought i'd share. used without permission (haha).

I.

I worked, a long and lonely hour.
I tilled my fields,
Day by day,
And slept by night.
In the broad land
Under the broad sky
Alone.
The loneliness beat upon me
Raked its claws across my soul
Burned with each drop of sweat.

A storm came.
The rains washed out my fields
Leaving a mess
I could not clean up alone
But one was there beside me
And another
And another
And yet more

"We have been here all along,
Weary man," they said.
"You needed but to cry out.
Yet you did not.
So we came to find you."

And we feasted
We sang, and danced,
We ate and drank and toasted.
We made lighter
Many a weary hour.

We swam in the stream
We climbed the mountains
We braved the deserts, faced down
Wild animals.

We laughed.

II.

For a reason unknown to us
Unexplained, incorporeal
It was time to part.
We begged
Plead
Bargained
Offered argument
Demanded explanation
To no avail.
The cruelty was transfixed
As the stars in the heavens.
So we wept.
And we unsheathed our knives
And we carved our marks
Our scars
Scratched them on each other's souls.

III.

I left that place.
There was nothing for me there.
I went back
To where we had been
I went back to the table
The places were empty, the feast
Gone.
I went to the dance hall
The instruments were shattered
The music escaped.

The stream we had swum
Contained but water and the ghost
Of voices.
I reclimbed the mountain
There was scenery,
But the beauty had fled
The desert was hot.
The wild animals tore at me. I
Cared not.

The laughter died in my throat.

IV.

I wandered the land, and
An old man with a sad wide smile
Pointed me down a side road.
"Straight along here," he said,
"Can you find your friends."
But the road had many forks
I followed one to a train station
The train left without me.
A friend was on it.
I grew sad.

I followed another road to a house
Where there was a party
A friend was there,
But I could not find her.
I grew sad.

The third fork
Led to a dock
A friend waved to me from
The deck of a departing ship.
I waved to him
And was blinded by the sun.
I despaired.

V.

Taken by the hand again,
Again by a kind man, led
Down the straight path
To a hill. He said,
"Your friends are at the top."

I climbed, but I saw them not
I saw instead a weak man
Nailed to slabs of wood.
In His hands, gaping holes
Pouring blood
In His feet, gaping holes
Pouring blood
His mouth open,
A hole in his side,
Spewing blood
And spewing water.

A kindly man forced me to my knees.
"How dare you stand in the presence
Of glory?"
He took some of the water,
And washed me in it.
I gasped.
I burned.
I died.
I was awakened from the dead, new,
The mud removed from my eyes.

I knelt with the others.
It was true--
My friends were there.
One was dead
One was sad
One happy
One weary
One crying
One winked at me.

We ate the unknowable body.
We drank the impossible blood.
We were whole.

VI.

I wandered the road yet more.
My weariness, it seemed,
Would overcome me.
My tears flowed
And I cared not who knew.

A friend met me on the road.

"Why so wet?" she said.

"Those whom I love," I said, "I am
Parted from."

"Certainly," she said, "If you say that,
Your tears will flow without ceasing."

"What then shall I say?" said I.

"Say rather,
Those whom I love, I shall see again.
Those whom I love, I am united with.
The only one who loved me,
Gave his perfect body
For me."

Then my tears flowed fast, but not
From sadness.

VII.

I grow old... I grow old...

The veil falls away at last
We are finally all here
Our souls are exposed
And the scars begin to burn.

But they are washed, and
Hurt no more.
Rather, they bind us
And it is only in having them
That we are fully healed.

A man comes who is not a man,
And the scar he has carved on
Each of us
Binds us to him
He calls us together
We eat, we drink
We sing and dance.

We laugh.