Fine spider web cracks
Bending without breaking
Rough diamond chips
Standing without shaking
Fully broken pieces
Glued to even stronger
Worn and weathered edges
Lasting even longer
Healing and forgiveness
Held between each line
Promise, love, connection
These imperfections fine
What do words mean? Tell me without words
They’re mere vibrations lost in the air
A finite selection of sounds and pauses
Only make sense if a listener is there
The speaker thinks this, says that, this way
The hearer gets half and imagines more
Memory selectively picks, stores, recalls
Words lost or altered while feelings endure
Words everywhere, all the time, drowning in words
In one place harmless and another place betray
Speak your own ruin before you can stop it
Til you find yourself tied up with no words to say
What enormous power in words can be had
For they can work great good or unending bad
Dark river beds so far below
Rushing with torrents full of rain
So many muddy memories held
Entangled joy, sadness, and pain
They saturate the ground below
And always upward ebb and flow
To bring forgotten back to life
What so long dormant there has lain
Through crevices in life’s hard rock
Waters of the past permeate
Changing brick to quicksand mud
Unstable, sudden falls create
They turn the world upside down
To wash away or even drown
Before the present rights itself
And thoughts and feelings can abate
So much to lose – so much to gain
From the past’s watermarked stain
Though hard, it never is too late
To learn from memories that await
The storm has finally broken
We stand here in its wake
Battered, bruised, and weary
But we would not break
The quiet calm belies
The fragments left behind
A long road still ahead
Life’s pieces we will find
The dark, malicious threat
Lurks in the background still
But we have strength to fight
And beat this foe we will
We never would give up
With faith we know we’ll win
Claim victory in His power
And rise up strong again
