In the Season of Darkening Days

In the Season of Darkening Days
With softness flickering
And shadows cast
In the stillness of drawn blinds,
What hidden part of your story
Would come to Light
If you knew that
Mercy would hold
With tenderness
Every part of your Life
The secrets and the open chapters
The awkward lines
The false intelligence
The courage that cost you the unspeakable
The sideways truth you live with
To protect the innocent
The rationalizations that are almost reasons
But not quite
The right you did
But not for good
?

If you knew that
Mercy
Would hold every word
Every period and question mark
And dash
Of your story
With the same gentle attention

What would you lay in her hands?

 

jmwhitehurst

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The Shawl

October is the shawl around the shoulders of winter
The be-draggled be-gonias that will fast be-gone
Lavender shadows in the soft silver hair of the elders
And in the air of an aging year that will not go down quietly

The bite of the noon breeze is sharper than my mother’s tongue
Keen
Whetted by the contrast of cerulean and coppery shades
Shimmering in the reluctant light

As it pulls the unknowable close
October rustles her shawl
Tucked snug around the thin days
And turns inward.

 

Jaylene Whitehurst
October 2, 2015

Do not tell me what you believe.

Do not tell me about what you believe.
Show me what you’ve experienced
And if you can let go of what you thought you knew
Without beating up yourself or others.
Can you can untether your doctrines and creeds
And risk bloody knees and scraped knuckles
When you see the Light flickering between the trees
Across the distance?
Are you ready to
Strike out in the dim twilight,
Knowing that solid night lies ahead
Under a new moon?
Will you stay with the darkness long enough to emerge into the Light
And meet me there?
~~~jaylene whitehurst