This poem has been added to the growing section of Recovery Poems. I also find Parker’s poem’s origin story below quite helpful and instructive. The word harrowing is an adjective that means extremely disturbing, distressing, or painful. – Bruce M.
How This Poem Was Created
Years ago, during a deep dive into clinical depression, I was walking down a country road feeling more dead than alive when I passed a recently harrowed field.
In one of those imaginative leaps that can’t be explained—especially when it comes at a time of death-in-life—this poem began to form in me.
Over the next few days, as I midwifed the poem, that field became a way of imaging what I was going thru. It gave me a sense of hope that eventually nudged me toward new life:
“Enough. The job is done. / Whatever’s been uprooted, let it be / seedbed for the growing that’s to come.”
In the harrowing passages of our lives, there are times when “Enough” is the most important word we can speak, as long as we follow up by planting a new crop.
Memo to Self: Do all the “unearthing” you need to do to understand “the roots of what went wrong.” Then get to work planting “a greening season.” That’s what turns a rough-harrowed heart into a seedbed of new life.
Harrowing by Parker J Palmer
The plow has savaged this sweet field
Misshapen clods of earth kicked up
Rocks and twisted roots exposed to view
Last year’s growth demolished by the blade.
I have plowed my life this way
Turned over a whole history
Looking for the roots of what went wrong
Until my face is ravaged, furrowed, scarred.
Enough. The job is done.
Whatever’s been uprooted, let it be
Seedbed for the growing that’s to come.
I plowed to unearth last year’s reasons—
The farmer plows to plant a greening season.