Forgiveness (Poem)

It is strange, the day
when you wake up in a pool of sunlight,
your limbs loose in their post-dreaming lethargy
and you realise that you can release the pain at last;

that you can reach out your hand to the one who hurt you
and say, we can go on,
and I no longer hold that deep black well inside me
dark and sad and full of knives.

Perhaps, after all, forgiveness is more like love
than it is like forgetting.
It comes up softly and after many long nights
cradling hurt places tenderly
spinning gold from bitter straw.

Perhaps it is the lovegift that you give your poor, sad, wounded past self
to say: I see that pain, and I let it go
and I do not hold the darkness anymore
and I can hold out my hand again in kindness
even to the one who hurt me

and I can cherish the new flowers that grow on the grave
of the person I was, before:
the new life that comes from old things dying
the things I learned from those hard dark watches

the things the moon taught me, when it was just her and me
sailing the ink-black ocean of the night
never thinking I would ever make landfall again

never thinking I would be able to be strong enough

until the day dawned, 

and I was.