Courage - a poem

Courage.

It’s such a loud word.

It sounds so strong

and rings so clearly.

Like a bell.

Forged in iron.

Clanging with consistency.

Unstoppable.

Determined.

And yet

here I sit,

my head on the floor

and my heart out of place.

Searching for the sound of the bell that

chimes within me.

I know it.

I have felt it before,

but today, I can’t hear it.

I can’t make it out.

And then

I realise that,

perhaps,

my courage is deep within

the emptiness

and the exhaustion

that forces me to

stop.

My quiet,

unseen

courage

is not a loud sound,

and nor does it have to be.

Today,

it sounds like a whimper,

and it feels like a trickle,

as if honey were creeping down my skin

- something I could quite easily ignore,

or discredit.

I know that my courage is

my own

and it is mine

to generate.

Mine to select.

Mine to decipher.

And maybe today,

my courage

is ringing in my need for silence…

my courage

could be resounding in my need for rest…

and ding-donging in my

need for peace and understanding,

and in finding space

- making space -

to breathe

and be all that I am.

“There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that?” Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls