Balance
By Carol Hamilton
The pain in the joints
is such a small pain.
It hardly shows and weighs
next to nothing on the scales
of the earth's long sufferings.
I place incense on one plate
to cover the stench of unwashed
bodies on the other,
but humanity crowds the cathedral,
and I can barely hear
the dona nobis pacem
from the choir stalls,
and still the night hours are wakeful
with the aches no apothecary
has yet to mix
the correct dosage to assuage.