Time Forgives
It has been a year since I looked upon your face
That sweet pleasant face with smiling bright eyes
I spent my life in your tolerant grace
You let bygones be gone with loving sighs
I miss your eyes
I miss your sighs
In silence I hear
You're forlorn cries
The tears you shed
The things I said
They haunt my conscious
In waves of dread
You forgave me all, as a parent gives a child
To myself, will I ever give the same?
For words lashed forth with no thought, yet no guile
I shared your grief through remorse and through shame
I ache from life
I ache from strife
Slashed from my peace by
The tongue's sharp knife
Time won't allow
Time may show how
Forgiving takes strain
From haggard brow
VCW
February 2004
This poem was written as a partial expression of the guilt that I experience daily about the harsh words that I spoke to my mother while she was living her last days on this earth. Although, I try to rationalize my behavior as coming from the stress of the physical and mental exertion it took to care for her, I still can not forgive myself for the hurtful words that I said to my suffering and loving mother. All of my life I have been the brutally honest child that often made my mother cry. She is now free from all the pain, but I suffer still. If I could find for myself a small bit of the forgiveness that she held in her heart for me, my sorrow would be tolerable. -VCW
