For Those Recovering From Divorce

The Single Sign
Hope Rapson


First one, then another, locusts came
Slowly chewing in small bite size pieces
Then with larger jaws, ripping chunks.
A roar of blackness filling the sky
Making one run for cover sensing all is lost.
The inner drumming of anxious thoughts
Hears a frenzied decrescendo
Ending in deathlike rest
Fear rises to look…hope pushes to the window.
Midday dawns again… a landscape wiped clean...

A dry dusty mouth sighs at sightlessness-
Seeds sown, seedlings grown, now gone.
Stumbling, searching for a single sign,
The wounded draws to slake the thirst of loss.
The dipper serves a single mustard seed.
Deep within the walking earth
Vision forms, a blooming possibility.
A stirring in miniature beholds horizon-
A hill where three lone trunks stand
Mark the place to draw the line.

Days of undetermined length and focus pass.
Dreams shared severed, goals given way to getting,
Hopes hurt beyond helping
Surprise the heart with storms and calms
Walled up, but waiting to be healed.

Beyond the boundaries…a shoot, a stem
A leaf above, some shade below…
Go unnoticed in the gray dawns.
But shine in the noonday,
Glisten in the evening’s gentle rain.
Within, warm wind comforts the sorrowing
Strengthens to search above and without
The heart’s door opens; the will walks out.
Stepping off the porch and onto the path,
Wondering wanders to the stand of stumps.

First one, then another, sparrows come
Collecting living bits and pieces,
Building nests in feathered heights,
Singing songs of first flights,
Multiplying seeds in yellow sprinklings about barren barns…
That simple sign…the seed sown silently
By the survivor, surges into a soaring swarm.
Abundance swallows the locust’s leavings,
Within swirling shine and sweet scents
Of a life more blessed than lost.