A turning of the Blind I

It would be
an act of empathy
if only
we were able to turn a blind eye
inward
when feeling
our way around
soft dirt
and sharp diamonds
with only our bare hands.

We focus
on bettering ourselves
Daily
instead of making ourselves
feel
better
daily.

From the first mud pie
we are taught to make
to the first brick of the fortresses
we build around our heart
to keep out
more than intended
being
the eager makers we have made
ourselves
to be-

merciful

we
wage battles,
venturing outside our dwellings
for a time
feeling our way
a-round
the perimeter
tempted to go
as far as the I
can see.

Eventually,
we arrive with new visions
and
without any tangible evidence
of our travels.

Painting by Paula Modersohn-Becker, 'Self-portrait with hat and veilt' c. 1906-07 in [Public domain].

Emancipation of empathy

The father leaves
the delivery room
unable to wrap his grey brain
around her bloody pain.
The mother knows now
she is alone,
responsible for their survival.

The baby opossum,
smiling and listless,
lays still blinking away flies
from his glassy black eyes.
Rejected by his mother,
he dies alone
in the fresh cut grass.

A mother sits with her grown son,
worry lines her face connecting
the years between them.
Pain wrenches his body,
suffering they endure it side by side;
one will live,
one will die.

Salvation is a single passenger of deliverance
traveling through the tortuous view
arriving as a vicarious vacancy
forgetting and letting the suffering go,
anothers pain, one and the same.


Image By Correggio (Antonio Allegri) (Italy, Parma, circa 1489-1534) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.