Like Creeping Charlie

She had lived her life tidily
Never shifting from the parental molding
Careful not to stretch too far beyond the brink.
Slowly the stiffening had entered somewhere
Inwardly she had shifted into pain and then
Found a constant companion in grief
When had the happiness melted away?
Like the ice on the old pond up over the back pasture.

One day she sat by a stream and let the cold water
Sift against her toes, cool and clean and new
And realized that she had stopped feeling
Had butted the flow of life inside of herself
Until she no longer knew who she was.

Why had she let the mold lie in her chest like stone
Encased in a hardness that did not allow tears?
Why had she let their opinions matter when her own heart
Had words beyond description and rays stronger than the sun?

She took the hand of her tiny boy and walked home
With a new awareness, a new hope
She would not let them stifle her any more
It was her life and her heart and she gave her spirit
Back to herself.
　　
Inside the house the sun entered through the rear kitchen window
She peered out at the lawn rippled in tufts of incessant weed
It was like looking into the window of her soul
She saw the Creeping Charlie that had spread all the way to the fence.

She walked out to the tool shed and took the hoe from the rack
With renewed strength she hoed all that Creeping Charlie
Pulled and hacked and ripped and cut until there was not a shred of it
Left behind.

cailin raine