Come with me, love, we will
go together into this dark night
Roads are slick with ice and we
are the perfect storm
If summer had a knife I’d have cut
a slice to warm us in this winter
Today there was a 24-car crash
on the highway to heaven
It is the heart that sees essentials
The survivors are buried in quilts
We must enter the tunnel before
we can find the light at the end
No one said this would be easy
a rose garden is full of thorns
I want you to love
the pilgrim soul in me
Your face changes like the seasons
but a rose is a rose with thorns
Something there is that does not like
a storm – that wants it over
By the time you hear the thunder
the lightening has already struck
Raindrops are falling on my head
I did not make this bed so why
should I lie in it
Hope is the light that shines
on a rose, in the night, on your head
In your face I see the catacombs
where love’s martyrs lie buried
My pilgrim soul hangs on a thorn
It is a love of contradictions
We will walk together
into the thorny ruby light
turn our mourning to dancing
shed guilt for gladness
reap a harvest
nourished by tears
Sharon Goodier is an emerging poet from Toronto. In 1975 she published her chapbook, Primal Elegies, with Missing Link Press and became an associate member of The League of Canadian Poets in 1980. Her work has appeared in 11th Transmission, Dove Tales Nature Anthology, and New Legends Anthology. Her chapbook of social justice poetry, A Stone in My Shoe, was self-published in 2014. Sharon is currently working on a collection dealing with the emotional and physical effects of PTSD.