The Thing Is (six years later)

The Thing Is

Ellen Bass

The thing is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs:
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes I will take you
I will love you, again.

Samantha’s 17th Birthday

Dirge Without Music

Edna St. Vincent Millay

img_3118smallI am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

photos-07-18-06-002smallThe answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

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Is That You? (Veronica’s 15th birthday)

Is That You?Veronica

© Robyn O’Rourke

Published on March 2011

Is that you?
The falling star in the night
So pure, so bright.

Is that you?
The breeze gently blowing through my hair
Telling me that you are still there.

Is that you?
The golden ball rising in the east
Bringing hope that a new day, the sorrow will ease.

Is that you?
Setting in the West
Bringing a night of peace and rest.

Is that You?The castle she dreamed of building
Who dries my tears
As I gaze towards my future fears.

Is that you?
That makes me smile at life’s irony
That other people often cannot see.

Is that you?
That gives me strength to carry on
Even though you are gone.

Is that you?
Yes. It is you. You are with me always.

Source: http://www.familyfriendpoems.com

 

The Answering Machine (five years later)

The Answering Machine

BY LINDA PASTAN

I call and hear your voiceHoward Family
on the answering machine
weeks after your death,
a fledgling ghost still longing
for human messages.

Shall I leave one, telling
how the fabric of our lives
has been ripped before
but that this sudden tear will not
be mended soon or easily?

In your emptying house, othersSam and Veronica
roll up rugs, pack books,
drink coffee at your antique table,
and listen to messages left
on a machine haunted

by the timbre of your voice,
more palpable than photographs
or fingerprints. On this first day
of this first fall without you,
ashamed and resisting

but compelled, I dial again
the number I know by heart,
thankful in a diminished world
for the accidental mercy of machines,
then listen and hang up.DSCN3064small

To Sam on Her 16th Birthday

Præmaturi

by Margaret Postgate Cole

IMG_4171smallWhen men are old, and their friends die,
They are not so sad,
Because their love is running slow,
And cannot spring from the wound with so sharp a pain;
And they are happy with many memories,
And only a little while to be alone.
But we are young, and our friends are dead
Suddenly, and our quick love is torn in two;
So our memories are only hopes that came to nothing.
We are left alone like old men; we should be dead
But there are years and years in which we will still be young.
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