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Posts Tagged ‘death’

The Gift

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »


for B
 
The day after you died,
everyone was you.
Every man behind a counter,
every woman on a phone,
every child, every grandmother,
every stranger in the airport,
every driver on the highway.
Every voice was your voice.
Every face was your face.
Who else, I wondered, was
certain they could not live
another moment? Not knowing
the answer, I imagined love
carrying all our fragile,
floating hearts. I had never
been more certain of
the holiness of everyone.
This, the gift you gave me.
When I arrived home, I lit
a candle. It was your name
I said into the flame,
wishing you peace.
It was you I wept for,
you I wished for.
And you were everyone.

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The Change

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 5, 2025| 14 Comments »

Overnight, the frost
took every pink zinnia
every creamy dahlia,
fading their colors to brown.
The nasturtiums have slumped
into dense wilted tangle.
The marigolds hold themselves tall
in a blackened and upright
surrender. For now,
the bright, fresh bouquets
I made yesterday are still
bright and fresh in their vases.
This beauty, we know, won’t stay.
The message is simple:
All that rises passes away.
I see it in these hands
that planted and watered
and weeded and picked—
my skin now wrinkled and thin
as frost-withered petals.
Here: the chance to witness
my own rising and passing.
How natural to age, to die.
The flowers in the vase will wilt.
With every day, so do I.
Such strange gift. First
the joy of putting the self
in service to making something
beautiful. Then, beyond joy,
the grace in learning to let it all go.

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Learning to Treasure What’s Here

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 23, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
 
I believed I had lost it,
the rose bush I planted last year,
what, with the way it died back
after that hard spring frost.
Died all the way to the ground.
Every stem turned brown.
Was it for hope or laziness
I didn’t dig out the roots?
This year, the rose stayed dead
until one day, green. More green.
Then burgeoning, vibrant green.
And now flowers, so many flowers,
flowers of palest pink. The scent
greets me at the garden gate
every time I enter. How precious
it has become to me, this treasure.
Not because I thought it had died,
but because now I remember
it will.

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Tale of Two Moments

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 24, 2025| 2 Comments »



Holding my girl
on the couch,
came a moment
so tender because
I remembered
I will die—
what grace when,
minutes later,
lost in the bliss
of her warmth,
came a moment
so tender because
I forgot.

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I, Who Did Not Die That Day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 17, 2025| 21 Comments »

 
 

                  “I, who did not die …”
                                    —Naomi Shihab Nye, “Making a Fist”
 
 
I, who did not die that day,
also died. Not all of me,
but part of me: The part
who believed I could change things
beyond my control.
The part who believed
any of us can save someone else.
What a terrible freedom to know
what I cannot do. The part
who did not die is the part
who loves—loves what was,
loves what is now, loves as long
as I am able to love.
The part who did not die
is the part who still thrills to see
the twitchy-nosed bunny
streak across the grass
and the near-full moon that bathes
me in cold blue light. The part
who still lives is not afraid to grieve
and lets herself be turned
toward fear and learns,
learns to meet even heartache
with wonder. Like a tree, I grow
from the soil of all I have lost.
I, who did not die that day,
am still being taught how to touch
the wound and let myself be sung
by the part still wildly alive.

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Still Lifes from the Gathering on the Day Before She Will Die

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 25, 2024| 11 Comments »


                  for D.B.F.
 
 
The white and blue folds of her sweater.
 
The hand of her daughter on her shoulder.
 
The rain.

The cancer blossoming in her brain.
 
The story of when she did dishes for the dying woman.
 
This dying woman in the home she just built.
 
The glasses lifted high for a champagne toast.
 
The medicine waiting for tomorrow.
 
The snapdragons on the table not yet starting to droop.
 
The song we have sung with her for thirty years.
 
The tears.
 
The missing harmony where her voice would be.
 
The smile on her face as if nothing was missing.
 
As if nothing was lacking.
 
As if she was opening the gate
 
and showing us this, this is the way to walk through.
 

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Permanent

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 13, 2024| 10 Comments »

 
 
It will not last,
this tattoo on my wrist
 
of a swirling comet
and two fixed stars.
 
The stain of henna
will fade, will diminish.
 
Not like his death,
which teaches me
 
forever every day.
But his life is ever here,
 
tattooed into my blood.
Every pulse remembers
 
how he entered my world
and changed everything.
 
There is no ink so enduring
as love.
 
 

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Still Learning to Pray

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 1, 2024| 4 Comments »

The night the scrub oak leaves emerged
was the night the temperature dropped
to twenty two degrees. Whatever had dared
to unfurl has become a brown and brittle thing.
I put these, too, on the altar of the day—
not just the flax flowers purple and thriving,
not just the greens of the sedge, the rush,  
but also the barren branches of oak
with their lack of growth, their shriveled hope.
The dead invite us into the mystery
every bit as much as the living.
I carry the gray sticks like a sparse bouquet.
The woody scent lingers on my hands.

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Death Writes to Rosemerry

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on November 4, 2023| 6 Comments »


 
Sweetheart,
don’t think I didn’t notice
how you woke this morning,
your body humming with life.
Don’t think I didn’t thrill with you
in the ecstasy of breath,
the astonishment you felt
in your own being.
I, too, love the lilt of inhale,
the rush of exhale,
but oh, dear woman,
I will teach you to love
the sweet deep calm in between,
that kingdom of stillness
that touches eternity.
 
Don’t ask me questions
I cannot answer for you.
I will come for you when I come,
and you will come with me.
But even now I shape you,
even now when you
are so in love with life,
even now as you find
a new slant of light to sit in,
even now as you tremble,
pulsing with promises
you have no idea if you can keep,
even now as you throb with joy,
as you ache with love.
Even now, I shape you,
even now.

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This Is How

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 25, 2023| 8 Comments »


It’s the chill air, say the scientists,
that allows the nose to delineate
the musky smell of autumn,
not like the warm summer air
that traps and mashes
all the aromatic molecules together.
No, it’s the constricting nature of cold
that lets us pick out the sweet loam
of dried grass and peaty scent of sugars
breaking down in the leaves.
 
But it’s memory that says,
Isn’t this smell wonderful.
It’s the amygdala that relates it
to the childhood joy
of skipping through gutters of oak leaves
and the adult joy of jumping
in great piles of cottonwood leaves
with my son.
 
In this golden moment,
I’m every age I’ve ever been in the fall,
and every version of me basks
in low autumn light. This is how
I breathe in the fragrance of death
and decay and moldering,
and think isn’t it wonderful, this life.

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