Perhaps, among all the things that threaten hope, no one thing is more confounding than that sense of alienation you feel when it seems that you are alone, that no matter what you say, nobody will really understand what it is that you are suffering, and what it is that you most need to communicate. And so, on this bright morning as I write file notes on clients who would give anything to move beyond anger, and answer email from Lenora who is cutting back raspberry canes, my attention drifts back to a poem I wrote several years ago. It was my olive branch of solidarity with an angry-but-treasured client named Danny. It was my way of saying that maybe I understood just how hard he was trying.
He, in turn, was grateful. Unbeknownst to me, he had also tried to extinguish a persistent raspberry. In return he wrote me a poem about hope. I have lost track of his poem, but I still have mine. So here it is.
THE RASPBERRY
Who would expect a seed of anger
To flourish in soil where a careful gardener
Nurtures only flowers of gentleness,
Sprouts of wisdom,
Sprigs of forgiveness?
Perhaps it is the same one who expects a raspberry plant to grow in concrete,
For grow it does,
In the arid place, not a growing space
‘Tween the driveway and the garage.
With roughened stems in scrapes our arms
Blisters our palms on its prickly exterior
Re-asserts itself when the garage door crushes it!
Persisting unwanted, year after year!
While its coddled neighbours wither.
And who would expect to quickly vanquish
The raspberry plant by pulling its roots out?
Denying its planthood,
Or moving it elsewhere?
Perhaps the same one who expects deep anger
To shrivel and die if we simply ignore it,
Disappear if we merely ask it,
Be less angry when we talk about it.
What else in the world could be so intractable,
More unpleasant, less defensible
Than long-brewing anger
And unbidden raspberries growing in concrete?
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