Get Over It

 

Get Over It

(“So Lot chose the region around the Jordan for himself. Lot headed out toward the east, and they separated from each other.” Genesis 13:11)

They tell me to get over it,
they tell me to repent. The voices die
at night and
live again the
next day. They tell me there is a price
to pay. Get over it, like downshifting in the
passing lane. Get over it, though the embers are still
fanned into flame.

They tell me I have lost my way,
they tell me I’ve gone off the deep end.
They point out I chose the left
when I should have veered right all along.
I never minded where I lived,
I just needed the voices to cease that
ad-libbed their sermons on the back of broken hearts.

I searched for the invisible, sought and knocked
time and time again. I looked for the unseen soul
who knew pain as deeply as I; pain that rarely
is over.
I ached for ancient friends and sighed for enlightenment.
I cried alone under wooden pews,
I needed more than one visitor who would refuse
to accuse the location of my pain.

Get over it, the perfidy of imperfect lenses
could have been truer with more pauses and
less past-tense.

I was bloated with small talk, so I doted on
children’s chalk drawings. (They never left me
baffled by their silence.) For all the grinding of time
my head aches and
my heart breaks
over causes yet to be determined.

But today there were daisies,
today there were jonquils,
today there were poppies and
the sweetest nicknames for friends.

But today I’m washing in the ocean of love divine;
I’m bathing in the motion of earth and sky.
I hear the bells ringing the angels’ song
and miss a few who used to listen to the waterfalls
without defining their time or place.