The Quiet Work of Surviving 

I have learned that pain does not always shout,
Sometimes it sits beside the bed at night,
And asks what all this living was about,
While I keep watch for one remaining light.
I once believed each insult needed war,
Each careless word required my reply,
But storms will gladly rattle every door,
And wisdom knows which windows to walk by.
The tongue can strike, the stranger can condemn,
The crowd can turn a small wound into flame,
Yet I have spent enough of life with them
To know that noise is seldom worth my name.
I do not say this from a mountain’s height,
I have been thin-skinned, angry, lost, and vain,
I have confused my hunger with a right,
And made a private weather out of pain.
There was a time I begged the world to see,
To name me good, to tell me I belonged,
As if applause could make a self of me,
As if the loudest chorus could be strong.
But praise is wind; it comes and goes at will,
And criticism has its hungry art,
So I have tried to stand a little still,
And keep a quieter census of the heart.
I know the mind can build a courtroom cell,
Then call its old accusers back to speak,
And I have played both judge and prisoner well,
Inventing laws for every human weak.
Still, I have found no healing in contempt,
No victory in growing hard and cold,
The wounded soul is not made whole by hate,
Nor does revenge redeem the wounds of old.
I carry faults I cannot quite dismiss,
The anxious mind, the hunger to be known,
Yet there is grace in seeing what is this—
A flawed man learning how to walk alone.
Not lonely, then, but honest with the scar,
A little less compelled to prove I’m brave,
The wave may doubt the vastness where we are,
But still belongs to ocean, tide, and wave.
So if I move, I move by inches now,
No trumpet call, no grand heroic art,
Just one more breath, one more unbroken vow,
To leave some room for mercy in the heart.
I have not conquered life; I only know
The soul grows stronger when it will not flee,
And peace is not a prize the proud can show—
It is the strength to let oneself still be.
…

DCG