The Lessons Of My Past Poem by Maurice Harris

I must portray a stoic strength on the outside
To hide the immense pain I feel on the inside;
If it were not for the same, I may not know
The depths of which I needed privity, in order to grow;
What came first I wonder, the strength or the pain! ?
Was it a test of that which was already there,
Or perhaps a quality I had need to gain! ?
Either way, I possess not, need to draw compare;
This is a reality with which I live most every day,
My past has changed my futurity in most every way;
It is to this future that I look, with eyes open wide,
With a hopeful heart and a tremendous sense of pride-
The possibilities are as boundless as the sky, vast-
My future is made brilliant, through the lesson of my past!

-Maurice Harris,29 January 2011