Beginnings.

They start with a line of verse

A planted seed

A quiet word

A newborn’s cry.

These beginnings are the stuff

From which life is made

Not easy, maybe

But simple,

Uncomplicated.

Beginnings are the things we love most about life.

The beginning of something new

Fresh

Good

We rejoice in these sunrises

These occasions

These joys

Large and small

We celebrate the new

And wonder what life was like

Before the beginning.

But then there are endings.

We don’t like those.

Endings remind us

How temporary we are

The end of a friendship

                     A connection

                                   A story

              The end

                     Of a dream

                                   A love

                                            A life

The things that make us comfortable--

When they end,

When they’re lost,

We wail and cry

Resentful

And shake our fists

At God.

We ask why.

We are not good

At endings.

We look at sunsets:

Deep blue skies

Full of pinks and purples and golds

Trailed across the heavens

As the sun leaves the stars behind,

And we are lost in wonder

At the end of the day,

The beauty

In the end.

Yet at the end

Of a career

Of comfort

Of life

The last thing we think of doing is rejoicing.

The last thing we see is beauty.

Because what could ever be good

About

An ending?

A relationship ends, 

And friends flock

To sympathize, to comfort

As if this small thing

Were the end of all.

A house is lost.

Families huddle together

Fighting to understand

Why

As if a building

Were what make a home,

Home.

A good friend dies and those closest gather

To comfort each other, to bewail the

Meaningless

Death

To throw roses

And remember the one lost

As if there

Were no such thing as the soul.

We curse endings.

We bleed and 

Blame and

Wonder

What are we supposed to do

Now?

We forget

The endings

That grow into beginnings.

We forget the flower

Rising up out of the burnt and charred earth

Left by fire

Growing

Thriving,

The friend who appears

To pick up the pieces

Of a broken heart

To make new.

The old cliché is

It's only after the rain

That we appreciate

The sun...

It seems to me that

The old clichés

Often get it right.

We don't understand

And so we are upset

Confused

Afraid

Yet how would we recognize

Happiness

If we had never been sad?

How would we know

Home

If we had never been lonely?

    When a tree dies

                 Sometimes

                         A flower

                     Blooms in its place

           Snow melts

                        Leaving behind it

                                                 Spring

That's the beauty of life.

When we are lost

We just remember

Sometimes

The sweetest beginnings

Come after an end.