After breaking, after kneeling,
after raising my ripe fist, after
opening my palm, after
clenching it again, after running,
after hiding, after taking off
my masks, after stilling,
after shouting, after bargaining
with God, after crumpling
and cursing, after losing,
after song, after seeking,
after breath, after breath,
after breath,
I stand in the sunflowers
of early September
and watch as the bees weave
from one giant bloom to another,
and I, too, am sunflower,
tall-stemmed and face lifted,
shaped by the love of light
and the need for rain.
I stand here until some part of me
is again more woman than sunflower,
and she notices how,
for a few moments,
it was enough just to be alive.
Just to be alive, it was enough.
*
This poem was published in ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry on 9/11/22
To be alive and rise—again.
and fall and rise and fall and rise
fall, rise, repeat
Every living moment is a gift. Even those of angst.
and such a gift to know that, friend … that perhaps the biggest gift of all
It seems that moving through the deadly, raw,
broken openness into the warm light of healing is possible and those in grief ache for it. This poem is a gift. How can we ever thank you enough for it – how can we ever say how happy we are to hear you have come to know this?!
– paltry, but never the less, thank you a million times over.
Kerry
Oh friend, thank you for this–for finding the gift in the poem, the gift in the practice. Thank you for seeing with me how those moments of presence and communion are the greatest gifts. How they make all the other moments possible, create the frame, the only frame that makes any sense