Visiting

She gave me a gift, as I sat beside her
on the cold stone, damp seeping into jeans
and woodsmoke into everything,
eyelashes wet with praise,
with the gladness
of her warmth and the echo
of her hammer and
the sweet upwelling of her waters
in a parched heart, she said,
“It does not have to be bright to be brilliant.”

She spoke with that one tone she gets
when she knows kindness
is the most painful thing of all,
lancing as it does the deepest of our wounds,
inviting our tenderness
and the clarity of eyes washed -finally-
by the tears of stories
they should have shed
long, long ago.

The next night, I knelt on the rug
as she read me a poem by Mary Oliver,
because that woman knew
the ripeness of living
deeply intwined with a world that hurts us,
and who better to remind me that life awaits
only my choosing to belong to it,
that all that is offers every possible joy
only at the cost of every possible heartache.

I have no brightness left to me,
and I cannot lay claim to any brilliance,
but I know what it is to choose that breaking,
to open again to the sweetness
and the grief
who walk beside us all, those (un)gentle
guides towards nourishment,
and the only way home.

She gave me a gift, then she told me
there was work to be done
that would break my heart,
and they were the same.

They

    were

       the same.