In the ragged purr of the cat
in my lap I hear all the sun
she has yet to curl into,
all the mice she has yet
to chase, all the days
we don’t have left.
Posts Tagged ‘death’
One Lament
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, death, letting go, poem, poetry on October 17, 2017| 3 Comments »
Just Before Death Comes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged comfort, death, poem, poetry on October 12, 2017| 2 Comments »
You want to say,
She was old, she had a good life.
You want to say,
She was treated well.
You want to believe
that death can be tender,
a blessing, a dark and beautiful flower,
and maybe you do say these things,
and all the while
your heart sags, wails,
curls like a cat into itself,
longs to be held
in some great, warm arms
even as you hold out
your own unsteady arms
to hold what can never
be held.
Though It Doesn’t Look Like What I Expected
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, garden, patience, poem, poetry, sunflowers on September 30, 2017| 2 Comments »
They are dead,
the sunflowers,
all petal-less and brown,
and I almost uprooted them
from the garden,
almost tossed aside
their tall brittle stalks,
their heavy bowed heads,
but see today how
the small gray birds
flutter amongst the dead
and dive for dark seeds,
how the garden air shimmers
with dozens of wings.
Patience, I think,
with whatever we believe
is lost—
so much beauty survives
even after a frost.
After Hearing She Took Her Life
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, grief, poem, poetry, suicide on August 19, 2017| 6 Comments »
Before the sadness comes the shock,
like snow falling on sunflowers,
like nightfall at noon. And then
the tears catch up. And then
the wondering, What could I have done?
The urge to hold her now that I cannot.
The ache to hold her daughter, to hold
her son the way that she once held
my children when they were young.
What is there to do now but cradle
each other, to cry, to recover, and again
to shudder, to cry. To say to each other
that this day it hurts to be alive.
To notice that despite grief,
the larkspur are in full blue.
The river curls notes around the rocks.
The bees immerse their bodies
in snapdragon blooms.
How it’s never been more important
to know this—that the world
is beautiful. That even as we’re held
by tragedy, here is tenderness.
Here, always waiting to be opened,
the invitation to love.
In the Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, life, pests, poem, poetry on June 6, 2017| 4 Comments »
I apologize
as I squish
the green worm
that’s been feasting
on the basil leaf.
It does not change
the fact that the worm
is dead. And the basil
now will live.
Yesterday, my friend Carl
stopped me on the street
and wondered aloud
how we die
to the moment,
then greet the next.
He did not,
of course mean
a literal death.
The basil leaf
has a hole in it now
where the green worm
is not. I pick it
and eat it myself,
not out of spite,
perhaps
to feel how the worm
and I are not
after all
so different.
Dear Christie,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, change, death, epistle, orioles, poem, poetry on May 22, 2017| 16 Comments »
Yesterday I found a bird on the ground outside the window. Remember how I had told you about the two pairs of Bullock’s Orioles at our feeder? It was one of the females. I was too squeamish to pick her up with my bare hands. Someone at some time told me about the bacteria on birds, and like so many other stories, I let it define my actions even though I don’t know that it’s true.
I did pick it up, however, fashioned a little stretcher out of cottonwood sticks and carried the bird to the deep grass.
Though it was at the feeder the day before, already it was gone enough to have lost its eyes, now two little sunken spaces where the head pulled in on itself. But the small body was not yet rigid, and it hung, limp, over the sticks.
I sang a death song, as I always do, sometimes out loud, sometimes in my head. It was taught to me by Art. “Nothing lives long, nothing lives long, nothing lives long, not even the mountain.”
I remember the day Art changed the lyric. For many years, he had sung the final phrase, “nothing lives long but the earth and the mountain.” Perhaps like all things
that are new, it trembled something me. The old words were so comfortable and familiar in my ears, my mouth. I suspect the real reason they shook me was the truth of them. Nothing lives long. Not even the mountain.
How small we are. Sometimes, like yesterday, I let my sadnesses and worries become so big, much bigger than my body. I can’t contain them and they spill. It was beautiful to watch how, on that flood of my sorrow, you found a boat and sat in it and showed me it was possible.
Why did I think the deep grass was a better place for the body of the bird? I didn’t question the voice that told me to take her there. Perhaps we are all heading into the unkempt field, a place where we are open and hidden at the same time.
I watched the other three birds all day as they flew from feeder to cottonwood. They were a braid of song, seldom staying in one place for long.
Nothing lives long. It’s no revelation, but sometimes an old truth finds wings in us. And so it was when you told me yesterday, just before you drove away, that I needed to stop hoping things would change—that I needed to decide if I could be happy with things just as they are. Only minutes later I found the bird. Though the two events didn’t seem connected at the moment, now they are like two drops that become one water.
And so this morning, I join you in the boat. Although it is just a metaphor, I notice that it changes things not to be swimming in the waters of wishing things were different. I notice how there are no oars in the boat, and how part of me longs for control and part of me has already found the freedom to stare at the sky.
And there they are, the three orioles, their yellow feathers flashing as they rearrange the air. And there she isn’t, the oriole now laying in the field.
Later today I will fill the feeder. There are some things we can do.
Your friend,
Rosemerry
Morning Commute
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged corvid, death, life, poem, poetry on March 8, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Red carcass beside the road,
the thin ribs like white staffs
and the black birds
that flitter around them
like staccato notes
escaped from the score—
if you listen for a death song
all you’ll hear
is the shiny caw of good fortune,
the sound of your own
hungry wheels humming by.
When My Friend Said, “The Baby Quail Didn’t Survive”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, grammar, poem, poetry, Strunk and White on December 5, 2016| 2 Comments »
Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless hesitating, noncommittal language. Use the word not as a means of denial or in antithesis, never as a means of evasion.
—Elements of Style, Strunk & White
It would be less preferred
to say of the baby quail
that “It did not survive”
when the falcon
went hunting
along the side of the cliff.
Better, say the experts,
to make definite assertions,
“It died.”
It’s rule twelve:
“Put statements
in positive form.”
But what to say
of the inner fight,
how the soul cheers
for the falcon in flight—
all grace and ferocity,
precision, might.
While the heart
can’t help but cheer
for that bumbling chick
brown-striped, blameless,
chirp and slip.
It’s not that the heart
is trying to evade,
not trying to lie,
it just wants
to build a small hope
for us all with the word survive
something to soften the truth—
all things die.
What Then?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, do your best, poem, poetry, swan song on November 6, 2016| 1 Comment »
When it dies, the whooper swan sings—
a drawn out trellising of soft running notes—
a glissando as its lungs collapse.
It isn’t that the swan tries
to be beautiful then
after a lifetime of bugling.
No, the effect is strictly mechanical,
they say, an additional tracheal loop
within the swan’s sternum.
Isn’t it like us to want to believe
that the swan gives its greatest effort
at the end? Anything to release us
from the tedium and noise
of the day to day—as if doing it better later
releases us from the moment’s scale.
Sometimes we sing
and fail to recognize our own tune.
Sometimes we try too hard
and our effort comes out less song,
more honk, more strangled cry.
What if, instead of weighting
the finale, we focus on the few notes
we’ve been given and every day
do with them the best we can—
play with their volume, their
timbre, their tempo, their texture—
learn to feel them resonant
in our bodies, learn to find them
beautiful as they join the air,
the tune still warm from our breath
as we scatter our song across the fields,
across the highways, the forests,
letting it touch everything we love
and everything we are still
learning to love.
Emergence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cemetery, death, poem, poetry, spirit on November 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Tell me, I said
to the cemetery stone,
how long before
our names are
prayers only
the lichen
can speak?
Letting the Small Ache Sing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, poem, poetry, song on September 26, 2016| 1 Comment »
Not yet dirt,
the outline
of squirrel is still visible
on the hard earth
of the back road—
I step over what remains,
wonder
how many other lives
I’m walking on.
There are infinite ways
to praise,
among them
these words:
I am sorry.
Three Inadequacies
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, pet, poem, poetry on September 14, 2016| 1 Comment »
slumped on my chest
the body of the girl
not quite so limp
as the weight of her pet
still almost warm
*
no less permanent
this death of a body
so small
*
the dull weight of sorrow,
wishing it would come soon
to replace this burn
When It Is Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, parenting, poem, poetry on July 29, 2016| 1 Comment »
When It Is Time
The way you held
and bathed
all those children,
may death have such tender,
such efficient hands.
This is how
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, living, poem, poetry, sun on July 27, 2016| 3 Comments »
one lives
when she knows she will die—
she sits beside the river
and puts down the book
and lets the sun
scrawl its hot verses
on every page
of her body.
One
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, life, poem, poetry on January 12, 2016| 1 Comment »
Four Circlings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, life, poem, poetry on January 10, 2016| 1 Comment »
this gray afternoon
we walked circles around death—
the sun came out
*
be brave, I tell myself
until the only voice I hear—
be true
*
on the wrist
of the man with hours to live
the watch tells perfect time
*
make of my body
a bridge, now to now,
love to love, life to life
46th Birthday in Lone Tree Cemetery, Dia de los Muertos
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, cemetery, death, Dia de los Muertos, gratitude, poem, poetry on November 3, 2015| 3 Comments »
Past the grave of the baby girl,
past the grave of the beloved mother—
“we loved her,” it says in italic letters—
and past the grave with my birthday on it,
we find a tombstone greened in moss
with its names and dates long since lost.
The grass has nearly reclaimed the stone,
and we sit here together and talk for hours,
joyful expressions of dust as we laugh
and cry and remember just why
it is so damn sweet to be alive, to practice
what it means to love in the face of our impermanence.
All the leaves have left for the year,
but look at what remains—the chance
for sudden, immeasurable bliss
no matter what the season is.
Last Lunch
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged auction, death, poem, poetry, titanic on October 4, 2015| 4 Comments »
For the last lunch on the Titanic,
the kitchen served corned beef and dumplings.
We know because one of the men
who was saved in a lifeboat
kept his menu with him,
and over a hundred years later
someone bought the old scrap of paper
for eighty-eight thousand bucks.
My friends, just in case I die tonight,
and just in case it’s a dramatic,
exciting death, I want you to know
that for lunch I had Lay’s potato chips
and a Caribbean Spice smoothie
with protein powder. I didn’t
save the menu, I know, what a bummer.
But it’s written in chalk on the wall
at Heidi’s Brooklyn Deli, and if you take
a picture, well, somewhere down the centuries
it might just make a fortune for your kids.
Unlike that lucky survivor, I don’t happen to have
a Turkish bath ticket I can send you.
Too bad. I would have loved one today.
But perhaps at auction
you can make a few extra bucks
if you throw in the knowledge
that the sunflowers were in full bloom,
and the cottonwood trees were golden,
though it was already October 3.
The whole sale would be more profitable
if only I were more famous. Sorry.
Oh yes. Two pickles. I nearly forgot to mention.
They throw them in free with the kids’ sandwiches,
but those pickles might be worth a lot to you.
I hope not many others will die in this disaster,
but know that I am aware as I write this
that there is a sweet danger brewing,
and there are no life boats.
Why I Hugged You a Moment Longer Today
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, friendship, life, poem, poetry on August 17, 2015| 3 Comments »
Of course I know I am going to die
I know it the same way I know
the sun is dying, too. This is a fact,
that feels far away. All the same,
I carry it with me today as I notice
how the new summer growth
on the spruce is startlingly blue.
And the river, low and clear, wears a shimmer
in its song. Every flower in the bed
is fully in blossom, and the meadows
are lush and green. I know they will die,
as I will die, though all of us seem so wildly
alive in this moment, especially the bindweed
I pull from the garden as if
there will be a tomorrow
with plants that need space to grow.
I speak to the reaching tendrils of beans
in hopes of a harvest,
though there are, as of yet, no white blooms.
I tell them frost will come soon.
When Donna’s letter arrives on my screen,
I am just stepping in from the garden.
It was unexpected, she says.
In her letter, I swallow a hint of what else
is as real as the green all around,
and in me ripens a deeper hint of blue,
a hue that reframes so tenderly
these fleet shades of the living.
Bottom Line
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, life, poem, poetry on July 28, 2015| 4 Comments »
The first time I died it was sunny.
I could see the sunlight streaming in
through the waves as I drowned.
I was not frightened, more curious.
It was so new—the swirls of the current,
the bending of morning light. I was only scared
after I learned I was still breathing.
Then I fought for my breath.
The second time I died, it was lonely.
I stood at the top of the cliff
and the earth did not swallow me.
I fell for months without hitting bottom.
It was only much later I noticed
that I was alive again.
There were more.
Some of the deaths I do not remember.
Some of the deaths do not leave.
They are never and always the same.
I love it, this life, how it insists on itself.
I died again tonight,
watched as the mask of me struggled
to stay in place. It did not shatter nor melt.
It was just gone, though already I sense
it has found its way back on.
There is no need for tombstones, no need
to memorialize. It’s the living that matters,
and with each death, it’s easier to see
how life is so (oh, just say it), yes,
life is so beautiful.