Nothing speaks to the heart quite like a poem or a song.
Kevin Kling is a master at observations of the heart.

Tickled Pink
By Kevin Kling

At times in our pink innocence
We lie fallow
Composting
Waiting to grow
And other times we rush headlong like so many of our ancestors

But rush headlong or lie fallow
It doesn’t matter
One day you’ll round a corner
Your path is shifted
In a blink something is missing

It’s stolen, misplaced, it’s gone
Your heart, a memory, a limb, a promise, a person
An innocence is gone
And now your journey has changed

Your path
As though channelled through a spectrum
is refracted and has left you pointed in a new direction
Some won’t approve
Some will want the other you
And some will cry that you’ve left it all

But what has happened has happened and cannot be undone
We pay for our laughter
We pay to weep
Knowledge is not cheap

To survive we must return to our senses
Touch, taste, smell, sight, sound

We must let our spirit guide us
Our spirit that lives in breath
With each breath we inhale, we exhale
We inspire, we expire

Every breath has a possibility of a laugh, a cry, a story, a song
Every conversation is an exchange of spirit
The words flowing bitter or sweet over the tongue
Every scar is a monument to a battle survived

Now when you’re born into loss, you grow from it
But when you experience loss later in life, you grow toward it
A slow move to an embrace
An embrace that leaves you holding tight the beauty wrapped in the grotesque
An embrace that becomes a dance
A new dance
A dance of pink.