Bittersweet
By Laura Ashley
The cold bitter air of winter pierces my skin as I walk through the shady woods towards the pasture behind my house.
I rest my frozen aching feet as I sit alone on a tree that has collapsed from the weight of the ice and snow piled up on it.
All of a sudden I lose focus of my mission to seek out the pasture and sit with the tree.
I identify with its pain, with its absence of life, and of love. Just as it has collapsed in the bitter cold I myself have collapsed.
However, my breaking apart is not physically debilitating.
Just as the tree once felt the nourishment of the sun, I once felt the same supplement from love.
As the tree lies broken and torn from its devastating fall, I am a walking open wound.
With the absence of the sun the tree has collected a detrimental "coldness",
I myself have grown cold and bitter from a similar absence.
Soon my fate will meet that of this lonesome tree.
Soon my heart will accumulate the same detrimental coldness, and I too will break to pieces.



Laura Ashley Sometimes life gets busy and you stop writing, but poetry.com has your back (and your poems from 2002).