My Beacon of Sorrow



My beacon of sorrow

looms in golden stone

reaching high on a city hill

making false promises

of my father's happiness

that never came~


Each graduated sculpture

of its tragic peaks

brag in grandiosity and hope

and of possibility in healing the past

But not for me...


And so she looms

With a history in her walls

Only her surface glows in the sunset

Of society's madness

And within me

May a dawn emerge

in truths.



Joni James 2006 

The old vet hospital where my father received psych treatment in the early 60s