Forgiveness - Elizabeth Herron

[Lawrence Robinson]

Forgiveness
  
  If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
  Matthew 6:23


When the combat has stopped 
and the soldiers lie still in their blood,
after the city is sacked, the women raped, 
and you find the gold
is only gold, and the salt
of every attempt to escape the empty hour 
only sharpens your pain, make a cup 
of your grief; make an empty room, and wait,

until the waiting is a place 
you have lived, a place you know 
by heart.

When you lie awake amid the ruins of your sleeping city 
waiting
for dreams that have abandoned you, 
let the waiting shape your longing.

When forgiveness comes, magnificent black wings shining, 
you will be a place so immense 
with the shadows of your doubt,
that place is all there is of you. Then 
you become 
the visitation. You swallow that black star 
and for a while you are light itself.

	    - Elizabeth Herron   
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