Please
If you are one who has practice
meeting the pain of the world,
we need you.
Right now we need you
to teach us it is possible
to swallow what is weighty
and still be able to rise.
We need you to remind us
we can be furious and scared
and near demolished by injustice
and still thrill at the taste
of a strawberry, ripe and sweet,
can still meet a stranger
and shake their hand,
believing in their humanness.
We need you to show us how
we, too, can fall into the darkest,
unplumbed pit and learn there
a courage and beauty
we could never learn from the light.
If you have drowned in sorrow
and still have somehow found
a way to breathe, please, lead us.
You are the ones with the lanterns we need,
the ones we will use to find our way
back into the refuge of each other’s hearts.
This poem is from The Wonderment (Wildhouse Publishing, forthcoming Sept. 8, 2026). It is reproduced here with permission.
