Thoughts At 4 A.M. Poem by Glenda Cimino

Somewhere

Nearly lost to me now
Is the life I should have lived
Might have had
But for my own blind choices
[It is a white lie
That you can always be
What you might have been]
I hear distant echoes of that life sometimes
Like a television on in the room
The poetry programme I wanted to see
Barely heard
While a fierce argument is going on
My only child
Nearly lost to me now
In her madness and grief
Railing over her mistakes
Like a jilted Lady Macbeth
Wanting to die
How to tell her
That I have been there
And come back,
That there is no love
Without suffering
To open the heart to love
Is to open the heart to pain
To make her understand
That others also have suffered loss
Have felt the loneliness
Coming home to a dark
And empty house
Remembering that it once held
Joy and laughter;
That this infinitesimal suffering
Is just a miniscule drop
In the vast ocean of human pain
Learning
One must bring out one’s own light
From within
It is the only place
It can be found
Her heart is a |Pandora’s box
From which grief, anger and despair
Fly out into the room
If only she could find
The hope remaining
I too
Could sleep again……