Bitter & Sweet Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

Embittered from life and its rapacious round,
with naught but sour grapes in their vineyards to show,
blind to their faults, in ignorance blissfully bound,
their hearts were like stones that were meant to throw.

They laughed at her garment and her matronly air,
the rim of her waist bordered in ribbon of gold,
the bush of each brow and her thinning strands of hair -
the lady from Blackburn, forty-seven years old.

But she curved their minds around the street of her song
and rolled the stones of their hearts, she rolled them away
till the clouds of cynicism and fortune’s wrong
were broken to bits and disappeared where they lay.

Straight up to the heavens, the Scottish songbird flew,
singing as sweet as an angel and still more sweet;
and she touched each heart until it beat sweetly too,
until those who ridiculed her rose to their feet.

She sang of a dream and set their fetters free.
Their eyes were opened like blossoms before the sun;
and in that moment, where scornfulness strived to be,
it lay at her feet silenced, for, Susan had won.

And the span of a second can last forever
if the seeds are planted and given room to grow.
For every dream we dream, we must endeavor
to be a voice that rises above the shadow.

Let this be a lesson to all who share their dreams
that love can move mountains of the stony-hearted;
and skin-deep beauty is never what it seems
and means even less when once this life we’ve parted.