Responding to the Warrior Songs retreat

Last week, I spent four and a half days with a magnificent group of warriors, some of whom are making their first tentative steps back home. A young man asked, through his personal pain, “How did you survive?” of the Vietnam veterans who have been back 40 years and longer.

Here was my answer, in the form of a poem titled “Dance in the Darkness,” to all of those who experience that darkness:

There’s a darkness in my world

Not a place

Nor an idea

But an experience

So dance

There’s a darkness in the soul

You can’t heal

You can’t shine light on

So dance

Dance through the darkness

Dance through the pain

The darkness may never disappear

It may never see the light

Dancing will keep me busy

From killing the darkness within

Dance with a lover

Dance with a friend

Dance with the child that lives within

I dance with the darkness

Because I can