Injuries and Victories

Show me your battle scars

old warrior 

tell me of your injuries and victories

and teach me

if your conquests are not numbered

by cities, by faces, by years

then explain to me

to one who still remembers 

each moon of womanhood 

separately and clearly 

how time can dull the edge 

of memory.

Almost three decades 

since the young poet

abandoned the unfinished poem

after the first stanza

wishing for it to be more perfect

and always since that hour

I have been seeking the truth of my direction

maybe it is not to be found among the living

maybe it is not finding it that keeps us moving.

Slowly I have come into my own,

into my strength 

but the hallway to the door of wisdom 

still stretches before me

as distant to my sight 

as the first day when I walked 

among you and you told me 

that it might be found.

When I look down into 

the landscape of my self 

I am still searching for something 

more luminous, more beautiful 

like a cavern filled with jeweled lamps

glowing like stars.

Having glimpsed the far off

glimmer of it like a river

running under the earth

it should not astonish you 

that I am always seeking teachers

who may shorten my way

please will you transform me 

into light

that I may ascend more easily

to the heavens.