Helpless is:
Watching your child
fight a fever or sickness
when you have done
all you can do
When you have done everything
and you can do no more
and you just have to wait
Not knowing
if your child is safe
or warm, or hungry
Not knowing exactly where they are
and fearing
It is the gnawing
in the pit of your stomach
that won't be denied
When nothing you can touch
will change what is
Feeling this pain and knowing
there is nothing you can do to ease it
no act of conscience
no act of anger
no release of emotion
Helpless is a blank wall with no door
It is a mother
lamenting alone
over her children
astray and away
It is a father
that can’t find his little girl
It is the utter depletion of resources
and trying to find the wherewithal
to go another step
It is a bastard thing
for no father or mother
would ever foster such a feeling
It is sleep due to exhaustion
and eating only to survive
Cousin to desperation
father to despair
the thief of tears
It is the frustration
of beating your words
against a wall
and seeing no dent
Helpless lives in the hearts
of men and women
young and old
white and black, regardless
No one is immune
to the icy grasp of helplessness.
As formidable as helpless is
there is a more indomitable force
It exists as an underground stream
building pressure as it travels
through the caverns of the battered heart.
In the days of darkness
it courses underground
silently feeding the soul
Helplessness seeks to suppress it
but it breaks free
bursting through
the hardened soil of humanity
It springs forth
It showers the world
In the recesses of love
there is a seed
It is called HOPE
You can’t understand hope
It survives despite all reason
It can’t be suppressed
Whenever it is stopped anywhere
It springs up elsewhere
It pulses in the veins
of mothers and fathers
praying over a lost child
Hope, like a hidden stream
courses through humanity
Breaking forth
filling all the tributaries of life
It nourishes the dry places
seeping into broken roots
calling dead things
to live again
It still sparkles in the eyes
of the downtrodden
It is the last thing
you will find
in the hands of those
that have lost all
In the middle of despair, hope lives
Behind the clouds of gloom, it shines
Beneath the scattered rubble of broken lives
hope pushes to the surface, yearning to be free
It wraps the hopeless
in a blanket of warmth
Hope is the color
spreading through
the gray of helplessness
It is infectious
It defies reason and logic
Hope lives so that you might live as well
It is the cord that binds the strongman of misery
It is the antipathy of those things
that would desolate us
It is the reason we stand against all odds
Store up hope
in the bins of your soul today
Cling to it tightly
For tomorrow, helplessness may visit us all
© Ron Simpson Jr.
