Filling In The Cracks Poem by gershon hepner

Life is often spent by merely
filling in the cracks,
missing what the heart most dearly
learns too late it lacks.
In our youth the head winds blow us
where we feel fulfilled,
filling cracks that time will show us
we can’t ever gild.

We’re not like lilies of the valley,
but thorns of roses that
prick consciences in life’s finale,
before lifelines are flat.
We see these thorns through cracks that we
ignored, when unaware
that gaps can turn into debris
despair cannot repair.

Inspired by an article on Meg Ryan by Rachel Abramowitz in the LA Times (“The actress comes back around with ‘The Women.’ After all, what was the hurry? September 11,2008) :

At 46, thin and lithe in what appears to be a gold lace Prada dress and in curls, she doesn't look exactly as she did in her heyday, but on the regular-person scale, she's still gorgeous. And she's determinedly Zen about her professional vicissitudes and enjoying the unexpected liberty of life out of the limelight. Up until the last year, when she made four independent movies, Ryan hadn't been working much. 'I've been traveling, ' she says, both literally and, it appears, metaphorically. She adopted her second child, Daisy True, from China in 2006 and spends a lot of time with her and teenage son Jack. 'I've been famous since I was a teenager. There are a lot of empty spaces in that, ' she says, elusively. 'I just feel like I've been filling in the cracks a little bit. I feel very fortunate, very free. I haven't had any big desire to work.' And she's conserved her money, so there was no pressure. Her divorce from Quaid in 2001 was the catalyst for this downshifting of her public life, her work life, she says. 'It was such a divorce in a head wind. I just didn't have any juice for fame. I'm not a wildly ambitious person to begin with, and it wasn't like there were all these parts I was turning down. It all happened, really, like it needed to happen.'

9/11/08