What Hands & Hearts Hold

Linking today with the Sunday Muse for Muse #181  come join us!

 

Speech is a prank of Parliament,
Tears a trick of the nerve, –
But the heart with the heaviest freight on
Doesn't always swerve.
~Emily Dickinson

 

When my hands were small

I could not hold the heaviness of many truths

although my heart could carry every loss like a fire fighter

leaving a burning building with lives to save

 still I wanted to know what lied ahead

I wanted answers to every question

to know why God was everywhere

and my mother could not be found

uncertainty leaves a certain ache

not knowing the next move

nor what will happen next

has a way of moving us all

one way or another

 like pain can lead a man to drink

and yet love can do the same

I have come to know that there is movement in all things

in the gift of joy and the loss of grief

a bird swiftly flies to a higher branch

 yet his feathers slowly fall

each moving somewhere different than where they began

my hands have grown with time and callus

and I have held the heaviness of knowing many things

and still there are many questions

even though my heart has learned to hold too much

 like a bishop holds the sacrament

and a knight his mighty longsword

bravery only moves forward

and love is always brave.