A Victim of Convenience

The man who taught me hope
was a holy man but bore no righteous indignation
He found me gathering roses and spoke of
beauty in creation and a restlessness of soul
the symmetry between reprieve and
that which makes us whole; I let fall my stolen offerings
a momentary golden softness to abiding hardened ground
sparse blades browned under a callous desert sky
and said that, blessed or burdened, we all die

He found me with my back against a monument
to loss, to guilt, to countless wasted afternoons
spent before the symbol of lines I couldn’t cross
And the rains had been falling for weeks
I told him I would seek no shelter within his walls
He smiled and said it mattered not where
we knelt or for whose forgiveness we called
we were all bound to something, by heart or chains
for so long as our memories remain

The man who taught me hope
stood watching on a silent Sunday morning
- the one day out of thirty that the skies refused
to weep - as his church burned, and the faithful clung to sleep
unaware; but I was there to see the peace on his face
to ask how he could find release in being betrayed
He said another would rise in its place
and I stayed only long enough to leave one bloom more
knowing another will rise in yours