Giant Children
By Diane Thiel
Are these the giant children that you teach?
my daughter asked me on the way in to a class visit.
I laughed, but only later thought
how we are all children of varying sizes,
making mistakes all our lives.
With any hope, not the same ones over and over.
It helps toward forgiveness,
though one wonders how that is really possible
if there is no remorse.
It can take a long time to learn
that forgiveness is not the same thing
as condoning or allowing more harm.
There’s a difficult balance,
and as I take the baby steps to figure it out,
I am in those woods again without a guide,
trying to find my way through,
while at the same time having to lead
others through the thicket of questions
and the answers I thought I knew.
Copyright © 2021 by Diane Thiel.