Come Along

Let it come into you:

this loss,

four hours of decimation

undoing two centuries of work,

this destruction of a thousand broken pieces

laid dying and bare at your feet.

A hundred piles of wood,

the harsh sacrifice of accounts due,

recompense. 

See to it that you notice it, that it irritates you,

that you stand over the wreckage

unnerved, distraught and taxed.

Nothing can make up the healing now

but time and work.

It will take much.  Much was extracted.

So it is in love and all things worth keeping.

It will be three generations now before it is as was.  

It may never be.

But know this:  you are bound to it.  

The loss, the land:  it's all yours, given to be tended 

and husbanded.

I know your desire.  To forsake, to move on.  To wash your hands of mess and life.

To that I say, take a saw and a rake.

Clear the ground of your hurt,

see the agony and affliction.

prune.

salvage.

discard the worthless.

Take up a shovel and plunge your hands back into the earth;

say again and again,

"This I will rebuild."

Not the whole world.  Not at once.  But, in some way, come along.

Let this plot, this land be cared for;

live into the promise and curse.

Let yourself be bent, humbly, to this earth - 

nurturing the soil,

your soul -

as it forces more out of you than you thought you had to give,

the sweat,

the reserved and untapped cistern of emotions,

the exhaustion and frustration.

Let it become for you as it was:

the garden of your salvation.