Poetry By Jean Golden

      Lee Cannon CC



​
She Didn’t Make It

She didn’t see this sunset
or hear God’s voice tonight.
She never got the message
that darkness could bring bright. 

The God she sought was silent. 
No words that she could hear. 
Perhaps if she had heard You
she would have had less fear. 

And so she kept on taking pills. 
Poured her drinks upon the flame
of hope, and understanding,
though she was not to blame. 

It’s hard when you’ve been beaten
by a God who knows your name,
and singles you to punish,
and silences with shame. 

A heart that could not open. 
Though open was the door.
The same one that we walked through 
and climbed up on the shore

of freedom, and forgiveness,
with friends who walked before.
Through that same door of kindness,
whose God was Love, and more. 

A Spirit that could guide us
when fear rose in the night. 
A still small voice inside us,
reminding us of light. 

​

​
​Jean Golden is a 75 year old lesbian Buddhist who believes in love. All love, any way it is expressed. She has been writing since she was a child, but has only had the courage to publish in the last few years. Since then, she's published a book, “True North”,  as well as many poems.

For most of her working life, Jean was a nurse and a political activist. She was a founding member of the St. Mark’s Free Clinic, in 1969 in NYC, as well was an early member of the Second Wave feminist movement. Jean was a member of the Lavender Menace, a radical lesbian revolutionary group. All the while, her addiction was following her. First to alcohol. Then cocaine. Then drugs stolen from the hospitals where she worked. Then heroin. Her disease chased her from movement to movement, job to job, town to town, until it finally caught her and dragged her down to the bottom of the dark hole, from which she has been steadily climbing her way out for the past 37 years. Today, Jean is happy, joyous, and free. And very, very grateful.