There I Was In All My Sadness Poem by Shalom Freedman

There I was in all my sadness
Waiting for another line to come
When inside also
With the sadness
There was the sheer simple gladness
Of being alive

I knew somehow if I waited long enough
As I had waited many times before
As I had waited for many years
Another line would come

The lines would not cancel the sadness
They would not even cancel the waiting
But in their coming
They would strengthen the gladness

So we go on
Complex mixtures of feelings
Souls of hope and hopelessness
Of paradox and possibility
Lines and more lines
Until there is ‘no more'.