Keep Moving

Keep Moving (Stacy Wills, 2012)

  The ground beneath our feet

is cold and hard, 

as unforgiving 

as the hardest hearts

that forced our exile,

but leave we must.

Keep moving!

 We gather what little we can

 in our haste to leave 

this home we love.

How will we ever find another?

Yes, we have  our memories,

but even they are too heavy to carry now.

Keep moving!

Why?  Why?

  The question stings  our brain

even more cruelly than
   the icy wind stings our faces.

Instinctively,  we pull 

  our wool scarves higher - 

 a pitiful defense. 

But what else is there?

Keep moving!

O God, (if there is a god),

protect us in our flight.  

We are grateful

 for the full moon's light,

this lamp for our poor feet.

But what of dawn?

What ravages will be revealed?
Some wounds never heal.

Keep moving!

We ask the shining stars above

 if the nights we spent beneath them,
 loving and dreaming in our beds

will ever come again,

but they are silent.

Keep moving!

We tread precariously 

on a crumbling ledge of sanity.

This is the cost and pain of war.

With every step we cry:  No more! 

Yet all the while, we're moving.

Keep moving!

-Stacy Wills (10/12/2012)

This poem and painting were inspired by the song Keep Moving, by Trish Bruxvoort Colligan, during week 6 of Women on the Threshold, an online retreat from Abbey of the Arts.