Taught To See

Did the lightning strike upon you,

Split the ground beneath your feet?

Do you grimace with pain of wounds you suffer

Walking barefoot on fallen sleet?

Have you thought at all of quitting

At most bitter time of hurt,

When to one pained even more

You gave your tattered, only shirt?

Did your stumbles find companions

Of others' wretched scorn?

Have you cried yourself to sleep by night

And awoken void of hope each morn?

What would you do for one who cared

Enough to say hello?

Someone who knew pain of their own

And chose towards you to go?

Perhaps so it is and was, 

Perhaps mortal angel, for you, holds breath

While you fight to keep afloat

On a sea of life-or-death.

Can you take a gaze pointed in

And, now, turn it about?

 Can you pour elixir of faith

Into a mind once filled with doubt?

Will you dare to care for another

Who has no more love for life,

When you are scant moments away, yourself,

From collapsing 'neath your strife?

The choice is yours, is mine

Is that of every reasoning one.

Will you quit the winner's race 

When it is so nearly won?

Do you have no love for life
Does hope for chance seem dead,
Or do you feel so brim with life
That you're bound to share your joy instead?
Whichever tale is yours,
On whichever side you stand,
The fence is there for you to cross
And extend a friendly hand.

The hand that writes the words you read
Belongs to one like you,
One who knows of the pain of struggle,
The hardship that we go through.
If none hold out hands for you to grasp
Here is one who does.
I care.  I know just a little
Of the lingering pain that was.

It's been an all-out war
For you and I to survive,
But the war has not destroyed us.
We've found that we are yet alive.
To you who are kind enough
To read such words like these,
Your vision has been amplified.
Your war's taught you to see.

Adam Scott Campbell