Don’t think my sunny outlook 
comes from a lifetime of easy;
I’ve walked through the dark wood
and from depression’s cliff,
still find myself sometimes clinging.

I’ve cried my share of flash floods,
drowned several lives in the deep, 
survived decades of verbal abuse,
spent my time vowed and banded to Lonely.

I’ve been there and back,
having spent most of my life there,
but through it all, I kept the marker on
where my dreams were buried,

inside a humble chest
beneath the patch of wildflowers;
I watched the live hues grow
as the turpentine slowly stripped 
my own colors.

But the spirit, like pain, is buried deep,
like music in the heart, cannot be reaped
by any other, and perhaps the tears
upon those wounds are the rain needed
to combine with the light of the soul
in that long, desolate season,

and we finally figure out
how to use that manure
to fertilize our strength and desire,
and the sprouts from within
finally catch fire
and rise up to inspire,
and the wildflowers burst
from that buried chest,
breaking the lock 
from the inside, having had
enough of that old
non-life.

So when I see all that I now see in each bloom, 
know I, too, like you,
am the seed, the petals, the stem, the story, 
the roots.

Poem and image ©LauraDenise