These Stone Walls: A Letter from Dante's Purgatorio.

Mother’s Day in America often includes flowers, candy, and perhaps dinner out, but in prison it is marked only by memories. For Carlos Perez, it is a day of honor.

“When I had journeyed half of life’s way, I found myself within a dark wood, for I had lost the path that does not stray. Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was, that savage forest, dense and difficult, which even in recall renews my fear: so bitter – death is hardly more severe. But to retell the good discovered there, I’ll also tell the other things I saw.” (Dante Alighieri,The Divine Comedy, Canto 1)

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is a small verse with deep pools of meaning by the great American poet, Robert Frost (1874-1963). Virtually everyone in America has heard the poem with its four simple stanzas. I first pondered its mysterious depths when I heard it in grade school, recited as part of a pageant on parents’ night. But on closer look, there is much to be found in that poem’s depths. I found there wisdom about life and death, about purpose, hope, and faith, all told in my 2013 post, “Mother’s Day Promises to Keep, and Miles to Go Before I Sleep.”

  Please, read and share: "A Mother’s Day Letter from Dante’s Purgatorio."

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