A Lullaby for Suffering
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| Leonard Cohen, photo by Christopher Lee |
There’s a lullaby for suffering.
Soft, at least at first.
The cadence of heartbeat throbbing in metronomic silence, at the periphery of awareness. Existing in a quantum between moments, becoming present when you become aware of it and not before. Intensity is merely measured.
How long you take to drift into endurance depends on the length of life the hurt takes to overcome. We do our best despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and the diamond-hard fastness of our deceptions. We blink, morning is here, the damnable early bird pecking at us, leftovers in the baker's basket, fraying bits of us away.
Mistakes cover our lives like clothes litter the floor of a teenager's bedroom, hiding everything under a layer of haphazard. Yet when troubles are piled in a tangled heap, it is far smaller than assumed.
And so begins the journey.
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This bit of prosery prompted by the line "There’s a lullaby for suffering" by the late great Leonard Cohen, shared by the long suffering poets over at DVersePoets.
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deft philosophizing, Chris. When we are ready, with capacity and disposition always being weighed subconsciously.
ReplyDeleteCrunchy.
ReplyDeleteMetaphorically speaking, you sing the suffering to sleep and that's only the first stanza...impressive prosery!
ReplyDeleteThose pile of clothes... hiding or procrastinating, that is the suffering many of us feel.
ReplyDeleteYour Prosery is a lullaby of its own, Chris. I like the way it builds up from ‘soft, at least at first’, through the ‘heartbeat throbbing in metronomic silence’, to the ‘damnable early bird pecking at us’ and the troubles ‘piled in a tangled heap’.
ReplyDeleteThe opening is wonderful and sets the tone of the prosery to follow. I wonder if we washed those layers of clothes would we feel a cleansing of our mistakes?
ReplyDeleteYou must have known my stepsons when they were teenagers!
ReplyDeleteGreat piece, Chris! I especially love, "Mistakes cover our lives like clothes litter the floor of a teenager's bedroom..."
ReplyDeleteYvette M Calleiro :-)
http://yvettemcalleiro.blogspot.com
Am engrossing meditative take on the line, Chris. The analogy of the clothes piled on the floor works beautifully.
ReplyDelete