Helping Hands

Helping Hands

I read my friend’s anguish with pained heart -

stark words on a monitor screen bleeding living grief -

and search for words of my own to ease the hurting,

to offer some measure of relief.

I wonder why they are so slow to come,

these words, so laggard in forming when

the glib responses used to be so quickly done:

they rolled so easily off my tongue.

It’s as if such eloquent pain mutes

and shames my response by the depth of its

intensity. Its genuineness demands an

equally honest passion in reply.

This is real pain, palpable sorrow, pure regret,

an almost unbearable desire to alter that

which can’t be changed, what is forever absolute.

How do I ease this amalgam of emotions…

grief, anger, bone deep sorrow, mixed with

just a little shame and an aching, endless feeling

of loss? The need to Just Stop Remembering,

if only for today. What can I say?

And I read on, the words of comfort aching -

stillborn in my brain, momentarily unable to

energize the quiescent fingers of my hands

resting futilely on the keyboard...

Helpless...helpless.

This poem was written as a response to I hear You Call to Me and My Brother by Bruce 'Doc' Melson.

Little Fugue in G-, J.S. Bach

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