We all know people who feel alone in the plight of their pain. Some are beset by tragedy. Some tortured by their own struggle within. This is dedicated to those people we all know. It is particularly for those who feel they ‘must keep it together’. Or, for those who, because of their role, struggle to find the forum where their vulnerability is allowed to be tended. May they find someone to sit with them ‘on the pier’ and listen to their voice with the honesty of accepting them as they are.
Out on the Pier
Out
On the pier
Sitting,
Hunched over knees,
Hugging the shins,
As windy rain seethes
Upon the skin,
Smarting, like the rasp of wet sandpaper.
Bottom,
Tensely perched
On the damp, weathered timbers.
The fading light
Of dusk slowly settles
As if taunting a small hope
But washed to a slow fade.
The painful alone,
The unreachable
It wears down
Who can listen?
Who can companion?
On this bleak verge,
This precipice above the foaming frenzy
Of ever blackening waters.
Driven from the inner sanctum,
Away from the competent,
The cocky and the compliant.
Weakness is not appropriate
Except in clinical mode
To designated ‘professional ears’.
Watched by the umm-ing and arrh-ing of superiors.
Can peers perch with us
On this perilous pier?
Logic and decency says they could
But existentially
Can we let them in?
Do we risk weakening them more?
Letting the side down?
Not ‘taking one for the team’?
So,
We sit upon the pier,
Waiting for the weather to change,
Willing the weather to change.
The sun will rise tomorrow.
Simon C.J. Falk 11 April 2014
Simon's still stanza 