I’ve cast a weight...
Yours to carry.
Hit hard, heart of hate;
Bitter! Better to bury.
Forever friends, fine
Until that blade was sunk.
A forgotten past does shine
Past the good now debunk.
Young years gone by.
Cheers! Joys of birth.
Jeers! Mirth now a cry.
Is this what it’s worth?
But is it really you
I’ve hurt? For says God,
Full of mercy too,
“Truth be told, you’re both flawed!”
“You’ve fixed a stone
Upon your back.”
Brown broken bricks thrown:
A loaded burlap sack.
It’s only I that ache
For what I’ve placed.
To sever and take,
All that’s sound erased.
To never forgive
Is to forget
The forgiveness He’ll give
You first must beget.
To free her for good,
We’re freer to laugh.
Our friendship withstood,
Christ’s glory our path.
- Gary Edward Geraci
“Mine to Carry” is a poem about forgiveness. The protagonists are two women, friends from an early age, whom have since relocated many thousands of miles from their country of birth. Each has gotten married and one, with great difficulty, has managed to conceive a baby. Our friends converse frequently and when schedules allow, make the long, days worth drive to visit one another where there is much laughter and mirth. However, there was something in their past, something that goes all the way back to their earlier years, maybe it was something said over a young man whom both young women happened to be interested in. Whatever the cause, it caused deep hurt in one while for the other, it had been long since forgotten. Suddenly, this hurt has come up, some 20 years later, and now, without knowing why it hurts so much, one reacts in a bad way and decides to no longer talk to her friend. She places stones on her friend’s back, refusing to forgive, and permanently attaching an evil to the person who was her very best friend. She has condemned her best friend as being unable and incapable of change and in doing so she has put up obstacles to her own correspondence with God’s grace, hurting herself perhaps even more than she is hurting her friend. Everyone has their bad days and defects. Our God is not like this. He sees the possibility of changing for the better in each and every person. In the poem, a good ending is written in to this story. I don't know yet how the real life one will turn out but I have shared my poem with both.
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