Pieces Poem by Diana Holinski

You stood and watched
As your life was swept out to sea
The waves crashed over the pieces
Tumbling them round and round
Leaving them dashed and broken
The surf spat onto the shore at your feet,
As if mocking you,
The bedraggled remains
Of what is now barely recognizable as your life

You run, panicked, along the shoreline
Gathering the tattered leavings
Sand-imbedded, shredded and damaged
Pounded by the surf
But you can’t find that most important piece
That last missing piece
The one that the sea chose to keep
The one that is also a piece of you


The sea will not return to you what’s yours,
Unmoved as it is by your grief
No matter how long you stand on the shore
Watching the waves break against the sand
Littering the beach are all the fragments that remain,
All that the sea deigns to return to you
And it is only with those
That you can piece together your Life
That you can piece together your Heart
That you can piece together your Soul
Your bruised and battered soul
It will live on, though always with the raw spot

It will go on

Why should we both have these raw spots
With no salve to ease the suffering?
Why should we suffer parallel grief?
There’s a shelter from the hurricane
A reprieve from the gale
That rages in our hearts
In that weeping, raw spot within our hearts
Its name is “love”