The Glass Is Full, It Is Half Full And It Is Broken

For Sharon Charde, poetry isn’t just a journey within or an artistic experiment in the uses of language and form.

It’s also a deeply therapeutic activity, one designed not only to explore her own emotional depths but also to help others do the same.

As both a therapist and a poet, much of her career has been spent helping others who don’t have a voice, or can’t express their own trauma and joys without help.

A previous collection of poems featured the work of young incarcerated women, called “I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent.”

A new collection of work just by Charde, who is a resident of Salisbury, Conn., is called “The Glass Is Already Broken” and focuses on her own journey out of grief.

Charde’s son died 35 years ago and much of her life since then has centered around her efforts to find a way to continue in a cruel world.

Every poem in this series, she said, reflects the words of Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah: “Do you see this glass? I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. When the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.”

Find Sharon Charde’s collection of poems, “The Glass Is Already Broken,” at Oblong Books and Music in Millerton, N.Y.