Poems and quotes I found or were sent my way:
If tears could build a stair way
and memories a lane,
I would walk right up to Heaven
and bring you back again.
No farewell words were spoken,
No time to say “Goodbye”.
You were gone before I knew it,
and only God knows why.
My heart still aches with sadness,
and secret tears still flow.
What it meant to love you-
No one can ever know.
But now I know you want me
to mourn for you no more.
To remember all the happy times,
life still has much in store.
Since you’ll never be forgotten,
I pledge to you today-
A hollowed place within my heart
is where you’ll always stay.
_________________________________________________________________
“Some people come into our lives and quickly go.
Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to
new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom.
Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon.
They stay in our lives for awhile, leave footprints
on our hearts, and we are never ever the same.”
~ Flavia Weedn
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Do not go after the past,
Nor lose yourself in the future.
For the past no longer exists,
And the future is not yet here.
By looking deeply at things just as they are,
In this moment, here and now,
The seeker lives calmly and freely.
You should be attentive today,
For waiting until tomorrow is too late.
Death can come and take us by surprise–
How can we gainsay it?
The one who knows
How to live attentively
Night and day
Is the one who knows
The best way to be independent.
-Bhaddekaratta Sutra
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“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known
defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found
their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a
sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with
compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do
not just happen.”
Elizabeth Kubler Ross, 1926-2004
Swiss-born Author and Psychiatrist
_________________________________________________________________
What if you slept,
and what if in your sleep you dreamed,
and what if in your dreams
you went to heaven
and there you plucked a strange and beautiful flower,
and what if when you awoke,
you had the flower in your hand?
Ah, what then?
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge
_______________________________________________________________
The Phoenix Again
On the ashes of this nest
Love wove with deathly fire
The phoenix takes its rest
Forgetting all desire.After the flame, a pause,
After the pain, rebirth.
Obeying nature’s laws
The phoenix goes to earth.
You cannot call it old
You cannot call it young.
No phoenix can be told,
This is the end of the song.
It struggles now alone
Against death and self-doubt,
But underneath the bone
The wings are pushing out.
And one cold starry night
Whatever your belief
The phoenix will take flight
Over the seas of grief
To sing her thrilling song
To stars and waves and sky
For neither old nor young
The phoenix does not die.
~ May Sarton
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When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
~ Kahlil Gibran
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We would never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.
~ Helen Keller
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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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Little Snowdrop
The world may never notice
If a Snowdrop doesn’t bloom,
Or even pause to wonder
If the petals fall too soon.
But every life that ever forms,
Or ever comes to be,
Touches the world in some small way
For all eternity.
The little one we long for
Was swiftly here and gone.
But the love that was then planted
Is a light that still shines on.
And though our arms are empty,
Our hearts know what to do.
Every beating of our hearts
Says that we love you.
Author Unknown
_____________________________
his journey’s just begun,
life holds so many facets-
this earth is only one.Just think of him as resting
from the sorrows and the tears
in a place of warmth and comfort
where there are no days and years.
that we could know today
how nothing but our sadness
can really pass away.
in the hearts of those he touched…
for nothing loved is ever lost-
and he was loved so much.
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
~ David Wagoner ~
Love will Endure
If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one;
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation…
If I can take the dark with open eyes
And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange
(For love itself may need a time of sleep),
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure – if I can let you go.
—May Sarton
———————————————
HOPI PRAYER of The Soul’s Graduation:
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there,
I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight
On the ripened grain.
I am the gentle Autumn’s rain.
When you awaken in the morning hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there.
I did not die.
My Spirit is still alive…
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A poem I wrote and submitted to Still Life 365
Pickled
by Janis Tan
P
l
u
n
g
e
d
straight
i
n
t
o
a pickling solution of sadness
and
grief,
disbelief,
anger
and more grief,
Incomprehensible.
Dim.
Soaked,
The salt of sadness
Seeps in,
Bites,
Penetrates.
The wash of grief
Surrounds,
Drowns,
Reverberating.
Time
ticks
by.
E
x
t
r
a
c
t
e
d,
I surface —
Dripping brine,
Salty and cloudy.
Light seeps through.
Taste:
Mellow,
Uneven,
A bite of sadness,
a hint of bitterness, still.
A fleeting sensation of sweet,
Almost discerned.
Bite:
Not too soft,
Not overly hard,
But,
a
satisfying crunch.
(A little giving in,
a little softness,
— a nuance of acceptance,
perhaps?)
A whiff fleets by —
reminder
of
a soreness,
hand goes to
heart.
Pickled in a brine of
grief.
Emotions of all sorts,
Even beauty.
Now,
I am the brine,
and more.
Bigger than the parts,
but
never
whole.
================
Another poem I wrote:
Grief ate me up
by Janis Tan
Grief ate me up.
And then,
She spat me out.
Part by part.
First,
The eyeballs came rolling.
Blinked.
Blinked again.
Glared.
Uncertain
Of that dim
light,
they wobbled.
Next,
Came the hands,
Writhing.
Then,
The toes,
Curled in disbelief,
Still.
The hair,
Thick with dust
And agony,
Came after.
Randomly,
Others followed—
Intestines,
Twisted and knotted.
Ankles,
Swollen with insanity.
Knees,
Who quivered to touch the ground again.
The uterus:
Empty,
but heavy with echoes of
a
distant
heartbeat.
Arms,
Empty yet achy
From yearning to hold.
Lips–
Quivering,
and burning to kiss,
to sing,
to speak the name.
Ears,
that strain to hear
the phantom calls
of
“Mama! Mama!”
The spine,
all crooked
and hunched over
With love,
Lost.
The breasts,
Dripping
milk,
One
swollen,
One
deflated,
followed… …
Weeping,
dying to nurture.
The kidneys,
The liver,
The innards and all
What-not’s
They came,
Spit from the
Yonder dark,
Emerged,
all
discombobulated.
They huddled,
panting,
heaving,
hollering,
And they waited.
Finally—
out
it
came.
The heart:
Scarred.
Beautiful,
with a hole,
that sang
with ghostly
ethereal
echoes of grief,
quivering.
Like a tin soldier
it
soldiered on,
keeping the beat.
And all gathered,
to hear
the song
of death
and
rebirth.
Coming together
again,
after being eaten
by
Grief.
And then spat out.
Put together again.
But the mirror,
It did not
Recognize.
=====================
i carry your heart with me
e.e. cummings
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
I am so happy to have found your site. I lost my precious baby Oct. 21st of this year. My life has been an absolute mess. Being that I feel so lost umongst so many feelings I have decided to embark on writing a book. I have a wonderful illustrating artist lined up. This book will be respectively written within the ancient beliefs of the native american people, as my husband is Chippewa and I am Cherokee. Our baby, had he survived, would have been a wonderful mix. The book will be centered around the loss of a sweet native child and how this baby goes on his spirit journey to get to his ancestors. It is the best thing that I can do for my sweet baby. I would love to have your first poem listed within the book. Please let me know soon if this is something you might consider.
Most Sincerely,
Asianne