When illness strikes
controlling your life.
When pain is a nasty daily visitor
holding you tight
in the grip of old age.
When what remains
are aging memories
of a partner loved
of children young and once dependent
of adults who now need you less
while you yearn to be needed more.
Some turn to faith as a consoling force.
But I have burned those bridges long ago.
For God is no longer a redeeming force.
Yet I have found a way
To console my day
To turn my winter years
Into May.
I look to poetry
In its magical world
And find words
Which give life to my soul.
While writing I am free
So very briefly
from daily Angst
from memories of a past lost.
And I hope again for a new May.
When at my computer
I find the path
once covered with grief
to live now in the present day.