What a journey life is.

To go from the tangled thicket of pain

where every move twists you further

in a knot of hopelessness.

You scrape the packed snow off your car for sale

and crack a perfect circle out of the frozen windshield.

Having not driven the car for a while

you fail to notice as you sit without an ice scraper

behind the icy cracked windshield

that instead of turning on the defroster

which takes 2 seconds to work,

you have been waiting on the foot warmer.

Calling your friend back with the scraper

now that it’s not needed, you discover further

it was not even the ice as the condensation inside.

You swipe it with a moist pedi towel

that turns out to be drenched in some lotion,

now swiped across your carefully detailed car for sale.

Windex isn’t working, vinegar water doesn’t cut it,

and hot water helps a little.  Oh well, the windshield’s toast anyway.

A child, desperate to go anywhere but home,

knocks on what she believes to be

someone’s door she met the night before.

Unable to accept that the couple is away at work

when she needs so much for them to be there,

she tiptoes around to knock on the back door–

surely they must not have heard.

Unlocks the gate to be thrown down

by two Dobermans who pin her to the dirt,

bark their teeth in her face, their gums,their tongues, their savage speckled lips.

To climb from a pit where nothing can ever go right,

all efforts come to naught, the pain is getting worse and too little time,

to begin to believe in a world where life is like skiing,

the more you throw your body headlong downhill,

the more supported you become.

Where delight flows from within and supply is plenty,

where you get the man of your dreams

past necessary mountains moved with ease,

a summer run in the forest to a picnic,

then back to the cozy home with a view,

nestled in the arms of where you belong,

always safe in the arms of God,

There is a place to rest

and feel the beaming of what was always there reaching out

that could not be felt for all the crying out, all the pleading to an outward God,

the safe beloved cradle knowing that it will never go away

as long as you trust it is there.

gwendalyn gilliam, Incline Village, NV March 2, 2012, 57 1/2 birthday