After reading Allan Peterson’s On the Nature of Forgiveness

I took your floating chair and its shadow and sat in half-light reading
The Nature of Forgiveness.
Something I know about      in my own way      if it’s possible after
small deaths and genocides: Syria February 2012
women and children hands tied behind their backs…

Early morning birds are up soffit to tree top
home to the determined      the heart beat at the centre
and the apple blossoms’ pink nuclei
the clematis its minute by minute opening-out to light
as if it had one word to repeat in its short life      Forgiveness.

Things crop up or come back in spite of beauty:
dregs of old arguments disappointments—
no matter how we clear it out the head-house of dust and droppings
forgiveness for some is a country too far away.
If we get there it’s the letting down of trouble      it’s feeling
the earth heal      one dark spot amended.