When great trees fall…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.

Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of
dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

~ Maya Angelou

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Dying gently

Take my frail body into your warm embrace

Lull me gently into oblivion, not of dark Abyss, but of deep purple spirit

With space expansive so I feel reborn in the whole of the spirit’s grace

Take my frail spirit and reunite it with the eternal light

Not of endless joy and glory, but of human love and warm compassion

Let me bask my soul in the golden light I merge with for eternity

Take my frail body back to mother, back to Earth

Let her natural instinct wrap me in her ever knowing blanket

Of moist soil and warm darkness

I rest here now and I rest forever knowing I arrived to where I started from

I am home

When death comes…

One comes to realise that we are all but a temporary expression on an eternal canvas of the universe. This time last year she came in black clothing with a sombre expression on her unmerciless face and with a single gesture of her bony hand she froze us all in despair and sorrow.

When death comes in the final hour, when all stops in frozen time, when breathing comes to an end and there is no life left within a chest, it feels final… Is it? Is it really? We cling on to the indescribable feeling within, confused, lost. Is it really that the loved on will never again feel the warmth of life, tenderness of touch and laughter of a human beating heart? Is it really the end?

We are bound to a period of moaning when death comes. We are to revisit again and again that space in the chest that grips all senses and throws us off our feet. We are to make sense of it in our own time, in our own way and at a pace we can allow ourselves. Is it final? Yes, it is, but once a hope of virgin new light begins to creep in once again in time passing we can feel that beating heart of theirs within ours and we feel comforted once again. They live within us for eternity.