Sweet Redemption Poem by Alla Bozarth

Hold on now—
don’t despair,
don’t’ defeat
your mind—
listen to this—

Bono, popular Irish
singer of U2 fame,
suffers the loss
of forgotten notes
of a long-lost song
in a briefcase-bound
manuscript and
twenty-three years later
at a humanitarian benefit
in the same city of his loss
half-a-world from home,
two women who had found
his treasure in the attic
of a rented house
return it to him, gracious thanks
all over him—

Brian Wilson, whose musical
genius lay dormant and thwarted
in heartbreaking depression
after the collapse of his company,
marries a woman who knows
what he needs and helps him create it—
and with her love and their child’s,
and good therapy, and with the help
of new friends in music and
his old-time collaborator,
thirty-seven years later the murdered dream
of his album, Smile, is resurrected,
along with the world’s returned hope and
the composer’s healed spirit,
strengthened to be broken no more—

And after eighty-five years of mud-laden, down-trodden,
soul-killing losses, the Boston Red Sox win the World Series
with the wind at their backs all the way!

And the walnut tree in this garden,
not knowing whether it was female or male,
after eighteen years figured out it was both,
and finally bore fruit to make up for
so many lost summers—

And the roses that never bloomed
at last bloomed the best in their beds,
just before winter, glistening in
coral, vermilion and gold—

And the Coral Gypsy dahlia
that shriveled for years beneath
the shadow of a Dawn redwood tree
(itself twice reborn from winterkill) ,
this year enjoyed being nursed
every day with a pink pail-full
of fresh water hand-carried by me—
and returned the favor in full response,
with flowers as big as my face, resplendent
in wedding-skirted, wind-dancer colors of iridescent
purple, magenta, yellow and bold golden pink,
thriving like the queen she was born to be.

And all this began in the Spring,
when the diseased and disabled
Dogwood tree sloughed off
its pests and sorrows of thirty-three years
and said, “Let’s bloom our hearts out anyway,
and show the world how to live! ”
and gave forth that true beauty that is
classically called the splendor of right order.

No amount of creative chaos and delay can take it away.
So keep on keeping on, and, heart of hearts, find your own
long-lost treasures and deep living blooms.


This poem is from the book The Frequency of Light by Alla Renée Bozarth,
copyright 2011. All Rights Reserved.