Youth fears death,
For the blossom longs to be fruit.
But the fruit that is ripened by age
Loves Autumn’s west wind
And laughs, falling…
Only the unripened old fear to go.
—James Oppenheim (1882–1932), War and Laughter, 1916
death
Free spirit
i don’t want to be
just a strand of dna
passing through time
or an echo of a face
repeated down the line
just another leaf falling
from the family tree
a bloodline that someday
ends with the end of me —
i want to be the sky
or an eternal poem
wildflowers growing
wherever seeds roam
i want to be the wind
or wandering clouds
or the rain that drifts
or a free soaring bird
or starshine at night —
eternity’s glowing
ethereal light
—Terri Guillemets
Leaves for the Dead
I who have loved the sound of leaves
Restlessly writhing into speech
Desire that to my silent grave
Only leaves shall reach.
So I who walked above the ground,
And leaves that danced before the sun
May meet below to form one dust
And in the earth be one.
When the last wind has stripped the boughs
Some autumn, go out anywhere
To any tree, and look beneath
The leaves: I may be there.
—Paul Engle, 1929
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
—Terri Guillemets
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.
—Terri Guillemets
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.
—Terri Guillemets
Death lights heavy
Hummingbird mama
abandons her nonviable eggs —
but keeps checking back
a few more times, just to be sure.
An arm falls from a sickly saguaro
and breaks open on the ground
like a prickly green eggshell —
after decades of desert still-life
a few seconds of death-motion.
But the night breeze is so beautiful
those breezes are — so beautiful
it’s hard not to get swept away.
—Terri Guillemets
Memorial
grieving makes us stronger —
it gives us a spirit of grace
and the grace of spirit
our hearts feel weaker
but living past loss is
the ultimate courage
we honor our loved ones
by living on despite —
and all the more because
—Terri Guillemets
Grief bores holes
Grief bores holes
in our hearts & heads
like a woodpecker
— peck peck peck
— knock knock knock
You can’t make it stop
Eventually it flies away
— but leaves pits
that never fully heal
—Terri Guillemets
Abrupt
When you’re used to seeing someone day after day, for years on end, and then suddenly they’re gone, you
—Terri Guillemets
Holes & tears
Missing you isn’t just an empty void — it’s what-ifs and questions and endless thoughts and bittersweet memories and runaway feelings and emotions that can’t get a hold on anything physical so just slip and slide around my mind, and hide and re-emerge.
—Terri Guillemets
Cold is relative
When you’re shivering with loss, let love keep you warm with memories.
—Terri Guillemets
Middle
A headstone is just a bookmark in our unfinished lives.
—Terri Guillemets
Early morning goodbyes
Death is never a clean break — some stardust always remains.
—Terri Guillemets
Forty-two-tick-tock
the body is a clock —
bones tick and tock
years gather in flesh
an alarm set for death
—Terri Guillemets
Connections
Those we love and lose are always connected by heartstrings into infinity.
—Terri Guillemets
Seed in the wind
flowers are fragrant metaphors —
happy colors sing “carpe diem!”
wilting whispers “memento mori.”
—Terri Guillemets
Threads
Life is woven of love and death, aches and smiles, persistence and letting go.
—Terri Guillemets
Stone-faced
Wailing, bearing flowers
and collapsing to her knees,
her hot tears fall upon me—
But I remain unmoved,
stone-faced, above it all—
her face etched with grief
and mine with the years,
weathered with past life—
Gently she touches my face
and presents me the flowers—
I’ve seen her cry many times
but it is my nature to be
rough and cold, grounded
in reality I know nothing else—
Still she keeps coming back to me
and though I cannot give her love
I will always guard hers.
—Terri Guillemets
Inscribed
graves are not limited
to the cemetery —
they lurk in our minds,
and buried in our hearts
lie garlanded stones
marking loved ones lost
—Terri Guillemets
Symbiotic
Death is not warden of life, not thief, nor enemy — but Life’s most equal partner.
—Terri Guillemets
A final breath in winter
Dying ain’t pretty. Death is beautiful.
—Terri Guillemets
Sudden silence
The death of a loved one is a sudden silence — one of those deafening silences that leaves ringing in your ears.
—Terri Guillemets
Anew
Our bodies let go when it’s time to let go — it’s called death. We ought to let go of the little burdensome things each day — that’s called living.
—Terri Guillemets
Fortunate misfortunes
Death bumps into life many times as just a passerby — says excuse me then goes on his way.
—Terri Guillemets