The time will come

But when will it come . . .. . . . . .

Image: Forgiven

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

—Derek Walcott

Forgiveness

A Poem of Forgiveness

I want to wash myself
in the ebb and flow
of the ocean as it sings

its gentle lullaby today,
salt stinging skin
that only recently remembered
how to heal itself.

I stare into the blue lure
hunting for my own reflection,
until it finds me
on the soft curve of a wave

falling towards the rocks,
hungry for its lover’s touch.

In the small silences
between each ocean breath
I open myself to the sound I need
to forgive myself,

only to feel it slip
between my fingers
as the wave retracts
and rolls itself back
to its roots
within the depths,

where even forgiveness
doesn’t matter.

Lucille Greeff

Song of the ocean