(15 April 2023)
In my isolation The only comfort: You never ceased to love me. To know, And see, Day to day In your heart (Our heart) I was Not forgotten Not unloved Not despised But only Misbelieved.
Category: Poetry
When We
What will happen when we die?I don’t know I don’t know either Will it be like other deaths, The same, indifferent, undistinguished When extinguished? Will we be whole when we awake On the other side? Will we still be we Or simply one? Will we remember our unity of separation The apartness that kept us together Through all these years? Or just blend And no longer be aware we were any different? When we die we may see What fractured us Two of us floating in blank space No ground beneath our feet No clothes upon our backs And in a small globe before us and between: A memory The event that gave shape to all our life Revealed to us at last. It may seem small then On the other side Maybe we will look at it And ask each other: We went through so much For that? When Life is so much bigger And the Eternal so much greater May be We will wonder Why that moment terrible Was able to define us For so long.
You Raised Me Up
When I was young, and my soul so cheerful No troubles yet, and my heart burden-free I wasn’t still and danced there in reliance That you would come and laugh awhile with me. In my life, you spared me cold and hunger Grandparents said that you and they loved me But when need came, and I began to tumble You turned away and held back silently. You raised me up So I could roll down mountains You raised me up To drop in storming seas I am safe when I stay off your shoulders You raised me up And then let go of me.
Unguardian
Watching this girl with half-grown fingers Pushing fruit into an unbaked pie And looking at me with a smile of pride Sure she will find approval in my eye I am seized in belly and in chest At my center, lower, and above By that which fabled mothers always have, This fiery, flaming, fierce instinctive love. I would lose anything in her protection: Starve myself so she could eat Take angry bears within my teeth Leap into traffic in the street For her. And I must wonder Because the world is not all innocence If my own mother ever felt this, even once Why she deserted my defense.