Hermitage In September Poem by Jacqui Thewless

There lived
a single soul
with his just plea for life
in no more darkness than these
islands knew in winters past,
with no less brilliance
than his difference of consciousness.
Silence accompanies
the urgency of clans to kill
while solo innocence refuses death
till breath’s oblivion.

This year, a travelling Visitor
entered the hermitage in September
bringing talks.

No tribe or Church or School of Thought can
go the distance with me,
the Guest said,
though inner men and women walk this way:

the hand that barred and gripped and bruised’s the same
that later fails, is powerless to fend,
then folds and prays and mends
and tends and soothes but may cast pity out again
until the cycle’s run its course [...]

A simple spider’s web, the Traveller said,
like confidence, hangs in a window,
glistening. The sun
rises
and its moon sets on authentic remorse.
You just don’t see the links, the symmetries
as often as I do:
truth and real
kindness
must
come sooner
or later...