Do You Still Cry? ..... Poem by RIC BASTASA

you cried on your first pain and tell
everyone about it, sharing the pain, thinking
that with others knowing it and saying 'our sympathies'
can lessen the weight of the
burden and ease the pain,

i tell you, it is a matter of getting to know pain
familiarizing the drama of the heart,
scrutinizing every neuron of the emotion
getting to know life, and eventually preparing
for every inch and step towards death

for that is our destination, annihilation, but
something higher than that can comfort you,
birds fly higher so they can see from certain height
the smallness of lamentations,
we travel fast, and not arriving somewhere but
we gain something as we tread upon the pebbles that
make the mountains stumble

there is no use for cries, they are for the novices,
we must swallow that bitterness and from its effects shall we live.