When you allow the tears to flow out, you’re allowing relief and hope and faith and all sorts of good things to come in.
Knees down, heart open, head up
Sometimes, praying is releasing our pent-up, used-up life and making room in ourselves for new life.
Intentionally blank
We can’t really say anything about anything anymore without first washing it down to meaninglessness.
Real life
“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin — real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business; time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life could begin. At last it had dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. I was always rolling these stones from my grave.”
—Bette Howland,
Arise thankful
a new day doesn’t mean
forgetting yesterday
but simply letting it go
not to dwell in memories
but to cherish each one
as it pops up and surprises us
and then release it with a smile
the birds are singing of now
our hearts beat of the present
the past is a muted background
enhancing our carpe-diem lives
dawn paints the scene of today
and invites us to live beautifully
to be the artists of our own souls
End of life
no matter which end-of-life decisions were made,
there are always regrets, there is always that guilt —
live parts of me holding onto memories of a dying you
dead parts of me holding onto living memories of you
Do I write grief or is it writing me?
I write all these death poems, these grief poems —
and does it really make me feel better? Or am I just
twisting my heart so that I can feel, to remember?
Because I’m afraid that if I don’t feel, I will forget.
A lesson
Death teaches us meaning
of the word sudden —
one minute there, one minute
not —
the blackness, the blankness,
the emptiness, the silence, the void —
the most palpable, oppressing nothing
there ever was.
Sofa
I long to be close to
where your beating heart
was among its last beats.
I sit on the couch where
we spent your last night —
but cannot bring myself
to be on the cushion where
life was fading from you
and you lay against me.
I didn’t sleep, for vigilance
you didn’t sleep, for pain —
so tired, so dazed, so lucid
so knowing, so loved —
so gone.
Autumn’s wake
leaves dancing
in a brisk breeze
on an almost-bare tree
joyous at autumn’s wake
they tremble, ready
to be free, to sleep
with past seasons —
dying, they celebrate
the awakening of winter
Winter falling
cold gray rainy day
watching winter’s last leaves fall
from my cozy bed
In loss still they dance!
the leaves all dance
to the same breeze —
but some flutter and some fall
some shiver and some sway —
and when a gust comes
they lose themselves —
but are no less beautiful
on the ground, where resting
they still yet dance, but free