From Ashes Part 4: Sorrow’s Weight, Sorrow Wait

…a hurtful thing hurts yet more if we keep it shut up, because the soul is more intent on it: whereas if it be allowed to escape, the soul’s intention is dispersed as it were on outward things, so that the inward sorrow is lessened.

(Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part I-II, Question 38)

Deep, deep the sinking sorrow when

the weight drags down to fallow fen

and souls intent on aching things

twist, turn and turn in spiral-rings.

And, sorrowed overmuch, the heart

digs into ruts: the end, the start

alike to fractured, inward minds

(no pleasure can transform, nor cry).

The body dragged beneath the weight –

unmoving, rusted, bolted gate –

the mind, the body enemies

while pleasure smarts in agonies…

Untwist, untwist the sorrowed soul

and turn it outwards, upwards, whole;

the truth unbogs the sinking mind

and sorrow turns

                         to hope refined.