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Being Shattered

Read this beautiful Jane Hirshfield poem today - No Wind, No Rain

 One cone’s
addition of resinous cell-sap,
one small-bodied bird
arriving to tap for a beetle.

 It shattered.

 What word, what act,
was it we thought did not matter?

 If you have had the misfortune of observing an endlessly resilient person imploding when attacked beyond their threshold of tolerance, then you know what suddenly shattered looks like. The last word or act is usually the least insidious and yet it causes the worst damage. Having seen this happen to a couple of times in my life to people very close to me, I wish more than anything to never witness to such a thing again. 

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