Phyllis Klein, LCSW

People tell her their deepest secrets,
and she shows them what they don’t want
to see and why they need to see it.
All this digging. They keep
coming back while she sits, listens,
and tells them the truth that will hurt.
Her body is still, but she’s a tuning fork
sweaty with effort.

They connect like a bridge and its river,
a train and its rails. She aims for kindness.
Together, slowly, they sweep out synapses,
bones and sinew of emotions held under
silt beds in back estuaries of the mind.
In an office holding a couch
and a chair they teach her how to love them.

What is it worth, this work,
so different from labor, its physical demands
and actual creations. Like the 7,000 ancient
workers in China who built
those terracotta soldiers to honor
the Emperor, protect him in the afterlife.

Clay warriors, hidden for thousands
of years—were they waiting for discovery
like the secrets she hears? Confidences lined
up in rows like shadow soldiers,
glowing with ground gemstones
of cinnabar, malachite, azurite. Precious, awful,
stunning. And feelings, excavated from the mine
of the body— rough cut ruby of anger, onyx
of shame, grief canvased in wet lapis lazuli.

Armies of emotion, absolve her of everything
because she is a road on a journey to know them.

-- Phyllis Klein