Old Land

Robert Frost once said something about a poem usually starting as a lump in the throat, a profound sense of wrong, a deep homesickness, a crazy lovesickness—and he is right. This simple traditional-spoken-word-ish poem is, like others, a prayer of sorts for the many spirits of this world bearing the weight of costly experience. If you feel that weight, too, it is also for you.

Bonny Fleming : BonzEye

You are scarred 

and you wish that you were not

You wish you were young; fresh; arrogant and innocent 

in your confidence of what is to come

You are scarred

and it is not a curse

This jagged line of flesh seared and knotted

is not what traps you now

That you have bled until the ground gave way

hardly means you have little left to live on,

that your time has gone,

that now you only fade

This scar holds a shattered continent together

This scar is a landbridge over which enemies cross and make peace

This scar is an ice age that shelters all your history

This scar is a vein of gold in a mountain

You are old,

you are old,

you are more alive

than they know

I see your beauty

even as you sleep,

even as you rise

weary with the burden of use

I watch this scar

give you language

when a new star is born in the night sky

or dies light years away

It awakens your sight

It pulses with gravity and flight

It knows

who you are