Living Tree Poetry

Pain is a doorway.
A birth canal.
We ache and contract
to bear forth something new.

Tears,
the anointing of our travails,
work to soften
and open the way forward.

Rivers run
with a mountain’s burden of snow.
Melting at the
touch of warmth.

And we, without realising it,
transform our pain
by bearing down
upon it.

Pain is a path,
a passageway to life.
Everything that ever grew
first pushed its way out.

Life insists we evolve.
Pain, the propelling force
for change
ensures our growth.

The tree that
first burst its seed’s protective shell,
grows up and
breaks new ground.

And any gains we make,
that can be weighed
and found
to be of any worth,

are born out of
travail and pressure,
and darkness
that gives way to light.

Ana Lisa de Jong
April 2018

Photo:  Tutukaka, New Zealand