To love others

To love others

To love others, the preacher said,
we must feel others' pain

but, how might we possibly do that
unless we first feel our own?

Turn and embrace, without looking
over its shoulder, our own pain.

Breathe in the saved-up-from-childhood
darkness and ignorance, panic and dread,

just to see if we might survive.
Flight, the sum moments of our lives

might be described as, from one anesthetizing,
enisling distraction to another, inside

and outside the mind while the truth
we need face may only be shadows

flitting about the room above our crib.
Pain is real, elemental, unavoidable

but its accompanying fear may not be -
and it is our own interior frontier

we must traverse - our cowering hearts
holding the torch, leading the way.

O child of God, to love our neighbors as ourselves
means nothing if we do not love ourselves.