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Tricia is raising the bar this month, revisiting her “try-random-poetry-form” posts for NPM. She shared the Venn Diagram poem today for Poetry Friday and it is BRILLIANT. Having committed to reflecting on lines from Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Gate A-4” this month, I immediately knew I had try this new form with one of my phrases.

Of course, Tricia didn’t tell me this was going to be so HARD. I didn’t think it would be – it’s basically two Golden Shovels back to back, with the mentor poem phrase in the middle of the overlapping circles so that it both ends and begins two poems or poem stanzas. I don’t know why this took me forever to get my brain around, but – wow. Three hours to get eight lines is kind of ridiculous, but I am trying to go with the spirit of the phrase as well – so the lines needed to end with the idea that not everything is lost.

TBH, that is DAILY the thing that takes the most time with these poems.

I refuse to be cheesy and write sermon illustrations that are sunny and cheery and essentially meaningless. I refuse to do the “it gets better” thing with such a great woman’s work – I don’t want to write Chicken Soup for the Beleaguered American’s Soul type of crap that says the sun will come out tomorrow and everything will be fine. Damage – so, so much damage – is being done, not just to institutions and systems, but to people. Much like the immigrant children separated from their parents the last time this administration’s brutality was left unchecked, some things will never be repaired. I grieve that as any person of morals and sense does. It will not be “fine,” but it will be…well, in the Julian of Norwich sense of wellness. Things are chaotic, and we’re brokenhearted, but all manner of things will be well – because we are still here. The grievously ill body politic may not recover, but God is still here. And, we are not done working to save PEOPLE yet.

*Ahem.* Anyway – off my soapbox, here’s the poem.

All Shall Be Well

It hurts – how can it not?
We assumed that The Dream was everything.
But found how fleeting a daydream is.
A handful of bubbles, captured, then lost.

Not by might do the best dreams come,
Everything will not yield to the bark of the gun.
Is our land solely gold-makes-rules thugs and no more?
Lost Dream, steel our spines. We know what we stand for.