Is That Hope I Hear
Into the midst of madness I walked
softly with loving intent
Listening to my son while he talked
wondering where his sanity went
It’s one thing for your child to break a leg or an arm
so very different when their mind shatters
We want to always keep them from harm
yet here it was ravaging what matters
Common sense no where to be found
Coherence so out to lunch
Struggling with the awful sound
of mental illness landing a punch
Hurting my son, my brilliant boy
6 Honour Rolls in High School
What kind of thief steals a child’s joy
then tries turning them into a fool
When you mix Bi-Polar with LSD
and throw other drugs in the mix
It doesn’t take long for it to get messy
real messy and really hard to fix
Yet his large family gathered together
and the Medical community too
all of us aware of his inner weather
and what psychotic storms can do
So after seven very scary weeks
7 years if I tell the whole truth
I can hear hope now when he speaks
something so fleeting in his late youth
Yet so soon after I hear some hope
I hear he is stopping his medication
and that he has been back smoking dope
which is a slow form of decapitation
Because a slippery slope his brain has become
any more mania and his mind could melt
as a father I get increasingly numb
after all the anguish I have felt
Really painful knowing he is suffering
and there is so precious little I can do
My son so needs love’s buffering
but instead chooses what tears him anew
Why am I intimately sharing?
So I do not fall asleep inside
Sometimes poetry is about baring
the truth the mind tries to hide
Or is the heart so beleaguered by pain
that it slowly shuts down any form of feeling
colluding unconsciously with the brain
but stopping the hurt doesn’t always start the healing
So I must stay emotionally awake
to keep my sanity sound
Yes there are steps I surely must take
so my own life doesn’t run aground
Like putting my oxygen mask on first
if the plane decides to stop flying
It’s hard quenching my own thirst
while watching his mind flirt with dying
Yet put on that proverbial mask I must
if I am to have quality of living
Remembering to breathe and to trust
that Spirit is always giving
Each of us what we need on this earth
fulfilling Karma or an ancient pact
Honouring Love by sharing its worth
even when your heart is cracked
Dancing Wolf
January 18, 2018