Comes the Dawn

The other day I was looking through a storage bin of things I have had since childhood.  I think most people have bin or box like this. 

In mine there are yearbooks, pictures- lots of pictures, I never got around to putting in picture books, programs of the plays I had been in, newspaper articles I wrote for the high school paper, the piccolo I used to play.  My coin collection.   A customized Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs book my mother ordered for me when I was probably six- where my name and the things I liked were written into the story, helping Snow White. 

I sat there thinking it was odd, after all the years in school, all the people that have come in and out of my life, the things that I found important at one point or another, I had kept, and put in this bin- this bin that has been buried in the back of a closet for almost two decades. 

I got to the bottom of the bin and found a folder.  In that folder were poems I had written.  I never remembered writing poems, but I had signed my name at the bottom of the poems and dated them. They were from 1991.  The year I graduated from high school.  Eighteen years ago- they were the last things I had arranged in the bin. I was eighteen, and had just had my heart broken.

The poems I wrote, were of course about heartbreak.  But I noticed while they were sad, like any eighteen year-old girl’s poem would be, I ended them with optimism.  I knew it wasn’t the end-even though it felt like that.  I knew over the years, I had been losing that optimism that things would always be okay, one way or another.  Every day, it slipped further and further away- and I felt like there was nothing I could do to change it.  

There are moments in life when we know we have to change.  We know if we don’t, we will be lost forever.  We can’t change other people no matter how much we love them, want them to change, try to change them, or beg them to change.  In the end, we can only change ourselves.  Change is hard.  Sometimes it is the hardest thing ever to do.  There is a quote by Henry David Thoreau which says, “Things do not change, we change.” 

As I rustled through the papers, I found one last poem.  A poem that I did not write, but found very insightful among the few items I had chosen to keep from my past.  I don’t remember where I got this poem, or even copying it from a book. It was in my handwriting, but I had noted at the time, the author was unknown.  It is deeper and more profound than an eighteen year-old’s broken heart.  Perhaps this was a poem I wanted to keep for myself, from my past,  if I ever needed help facing the future.  Here is that poem:

Comes The Dawn

After awhile you learn
the subtle difference
between holding a hand
and chaining a soul.
And you learn that love
doesn’t mean leaning,
And company doesn’t mean security.

And you begin to learn
that kisses aren’t contracts
and presents aren’t promises.
And you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up
and your eyes open.
With the grace of a woman,
not the grief of a child.

And you learn to build
all your roads on today
because tomorrow’s ground
is too uncertain for plans,
And futures have a way
of falling down in mid-flight.

After awhile you learn
that even sunshine burns
if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul.
Instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.

And you learn
that you really can endure…
That you really are strong.
That you really do have worth.
And you learn and learn…

With every goodbye…
you learn.

© Veronica A. Shoffstall

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