upon reflection

'Two Roads to the Same End'

Continuing with the subject of relection, raised by Kat Sloma's post yesterday, here is the poem as promised:

One winters night so cold and black

whilst wandering down the beaten track,

she happened upon a broken heart

in hundreds of pieces torn apart

She collected the pieces she could find

but didn't know there was one she'd left behind.

Taking the pieces from her pocket,

she laid them in a box, with a key so she could lock it.

She buried the box as deep as could be

and it grew into a weeping willow tree.

With years gone by and pain too much to measure,

she returned to the place where she'd buried her treasure.

She found a rose bush growing there

and picked a rose with utmost care.

She gave him this gift upon the morrow,

he took the rose and rose above his sorrow.

Annon.

I found this poem is a book when I was around 14 years old when my world had been rocked and I was searching for answers. I cut it out and have kept it all these years. It seemed to give me a lesson at the time and one I still use, reflect, go back, analise, heal it and skip merrily on.

For me the moral of this poem is that no matter how bad the things that you have gone through are, there is always something that you can hang onto, something good out of the bad that will heal you, if you look for it and use it. And also that if you bury pain and don't deal with it, it will grow and grow and you will have to go back to it again later. I think that scared the begibers out of me at the time!

The 'wandering path' I took as life and the 'broken heart' the death of a loved one, a romance ending or any disappointment that life throws at you sometimes! The pieces buried in the box symbolise her burying the pain inside and the 'weeping willow tree' I take to be her grief/sadness/depression/bitterness or any of the things that 'grow' when something goes wrong and you don't deal with it.

I love the idea that she went back to the place where her heart was broken and found something there that she could use to heal her pain 'the rose bush' grown from the piece that she'd missed. And she gave 'him' (the weeping willow tree - her pain) the rose and she was healed. A happy ending!
That's my interpretation anyway, would be interesting to hear what others make of it?