After the Fire by J. A. Jance Page A

TIMES
    My brother made the key ring years ago,
    The female symbol with a welded fist
    Clenched in the defiant gesture of that time.
    The fist broke later, I don’t know when,
    And for years it stayed that way,
    Half broken like some long-forgotten grudge.
    Eventually it disappeared—not the ring, the fist,
    And when I noticed it was gone,
    I laughed, because I, too, had changed.

Interim
    I wrote this poem in June 1984, not knowing that in June 1985 my life would take a sudden turn for the better when I would meet the man who would become my second husband six months to the day from the day we met. I think the long period of quiet, not only after my divorce but also after my former husband’s death, put me in better emotional shape for what was to come.
    For those who are unfamiliar with the Arizona desert, it is helpful to know that the heat of summer usually comes in early June. By July the desert is parched and the trees and plants seem dead or dying. Then the rains come, and life returns. Perhaps people back east or in the Midwest—people who live with snow and real winter weather—have the same kind of reaction to spring, but for desert rats, life begins anew when thunderclouds come racing up from the south, bringing with them life-sustaining rain.
INTERIM
    The part of me that’s woman has removed
    To some far distant place
    And there awaits a time when I can once more
    Dare the risk and hurt of love.
    It’s quiet here and calm, the stillness of a stagnant pond
    Before the summer rains bring surging life.
    It’s June. The storms will come in mid-July.
    By then I will have waited long enough.

Daybreak
    I have little patience with people who consider themselves experts in how long the grief process should last. People who haven’t lived through that soul-numbing pain, and even some who have, often act as though there is a certain time by which a grief-stricken person should simply shape up and quit “wallowing” in it. They don’t have the time or patience to listen when someone needs to talk and ruminate about what happened. Interestingly enough, these are often the very same people who feel free to wag fingers and point out that someone certainly “got over it in a hurry.” They have no concept that many survivors, having battled some slow killer like cancer or Alzheimer’s, have done their grieving well in advance—long before death finally made its final curtain-lowering entrance.
    However long it takes, or however short, there comes a day when the survivor opens his or her eyes and realizes that it is morning at last. The sun has come up, and life really does go on. When that happens—when the gray gloom finally brightens a little and one catches that first hint of blue sky—it seems like an incredible miracle, and it is—the same kind of miracle that makes spring follow winter and sunrise follow night.
DAYBREAK
    Love has come full circle, and I know
    That I am free to live again at last,
    Without my every waking breath and moment
    Haunted by some image from the past.
    With my heart closed and clutching our transgressions,
    Old hates and hurts could never fall away.
    But now the door is slowly creaking open.
    At peace, in joy, I rise to greet the day.

Benediction
    This final poem is actually out of sequence, but benedictions are traditionally last, and this one is last for that reason. It was written in the early 1980s, when the promise it expresses seemed an impossible dream. Considering what was going on in my life at that time, it’s not surprising that I drew on my past to write it.
    The year I was a sophomore at the University of Arizona, I came down with a urinary tract infection that was severe enough to send me to the infirmary. Early the next morning, shortly after I awakened, my then boyfriend appeared, carrying in his hand a single rose that he had purloined from someone’s garden on his way to see me. It was a dusty pink