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Bits of Poetry

~ Linda R Davis, Raven of Peace & Poetry

Bits of Poetry

Tag Archives: Afterlife

Second Winter

22 Wednesday Feb 2023

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Afterlife, Ash Wednesday, Dad, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Fathers, Infinite, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Winter, Winter poem

The Aspen shivers, a little,

Its barefeet are covered in snow again,

Its white body exposed to a white sky.

I wonder if it is finally going to cry,

But it’s silent again, so I do.

The road shimmers again,

Like a road in heaven,

And they both contain death.

Ash Wednesday twenty twenty-three,

The day we lost you to morphine,

I arrived too late, down the icy road,

To ever hear my name again

From your mouth.

We had thought winter gone

But that was only an illusion,

One we wanted to believe,

After waiting so long for Sun.

Fallen Orchid

18 Saturday Feb 2023

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Afterlife, Ash Wednesday, Dad, Death, Dying, Eternity, Father, Love, orchid, Parents, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Souls, symbols

A death, a flower, a funeral:

A flower the widow turned away,

An orchid, left to me,

Child, and killer of orchids.

The months passed, and passed,

Yet, its stubborn blossoms remained.

Yesterday, the last bloom

Spent itself, I could tell

It wanted to be clipped.

It was dull, a bit brown,

And it drooped,

As if, life well lived,

But now there are seven,

New blossoms, ready to open.

I think how appropriate,

A symbol of our mortality,

Four days before Ash Wednesday.

And me, not even Catholic,

Yet impressed–

With what it means to die,

And not die, to live forever,

Even as we’re gone.

Winter Blind

24 Thursday Nov 2022

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Afterlife, Alone, Death, Death Poems, Eternity, Heaven, Hope, Ice, Infinite, Life, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Memory, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacred, Snow, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, The Universe, Winter, Winter poem

A white blanket was pulled over

Our homes, the earth, our heads,

As effortless as sliding on ice,

As uncontrollable as dying.

And, it was hard to see beginnings

Of fields, or endings of hilltops;

In that way, it was a blur of (also white) fog.

Who’s to say what lay behind it?

The infinite forever of lost souls–?

Just there, and there, look where

My finger is pointing, beyond the trees.

I see myself only as far as the fence-line.

All else sparkles back, a vision

Of what is here, and what has been here,

Always within the margin

Of what we can so easily see.

Love Letters

04 Thursday Aug 2022

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Afterlife, Death, Death Poems, Fathers, Forgiveness, Hope, Letters, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Love Letters, Love Poems, Lovers, Memory, Mothers, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Survival

Whisper me a tale of lovers,

Through limbs of trees and years,

Rattle a leaf, turn a page,

Rifle through an abandoned dresser.

You will find them there among socks,

With no feet left to cover.

The body is taken away,

Yet, rises again in pen.

She recognizes the scrawl,

It is as much him as him,

And hymn to her hurting heart.

You realize love too late,

She thinks, beyond the day-to-day

Bicker and fuss, we lost us-–

She sees her lover now,

In what is left undone–

The many things he touched

And with his touch, flourished,

They wilt now that he’s gone.

Yet, in her hands,

She holds his scribbled words:

Nineteen sixty three, nineteen sixty four–

And, it all comes back to her.

Knowing : the Other Side of Losing

30 Saturday Jul 2022

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Afterlife, Alone, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Eternity, Fathers, Infinite, Life, Loneliness, Longing, Losing, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Regret, Soul, Souls, Yearning

oh, they are right

with their cliches and memes

about how you will regret

when they’re gone

the missed opportunities

to hold them

to ask them

to listen

yes, it is obvious

isn’t it

but you are doomed

like I was

to never fully understand

the precious lives

so goddam important

to your own

so ubiquitous of shared moments

it is impossible to appreciate

their value

yes, it’s true

you’ll only know on the other side

of losing

welcome to being human

you will find it is full

of regrets

Some Gifts

29 Friday Jul 2022

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Afterlife, Dad, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Eternity, Fathers, Hope, Infinite, Life, Loss, Love, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Survival, wolfhound, Wolfhounds

Some gifts are better than others,

The way I saw your heart extend

Into past memories of her—

Tears from your uncrying eyes—

Her loss was the one loss

That broke you like that,

Like that,

The sobbing unashamed.

And then, it’s as if we fast forward

The great movie of our lives together:

You’re dying,

I’m a middle-aged woman.

You give me a dog.

A wolfhound,

Like the one whose loss broke you

Way back then. Riagan. Riagan.

Whose eyes held our gaze,

Whose eyes sought to impart wisdom;

Perhaps, her eyes saw beyond this life,

To where you are now.

Wouldn’t it be something

If our lives are that special,

They continue forever,

Two points–three–an infinity of dots

On some great line that extends forever.

How We Keep It

23 Monday May 2022

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Afterlife, Death, Death Poems, Doe Mountain, Dying, Father, Infinite, Life, Loss, Love, Memory, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Spirits

Moments, so beautiful they are painful,

Unless you take a deep breath

And carry them into your heart & lungs

Where they mix with the sweet oxygen

Of your body’s blood, pulse, beat, throb.

And you think, I will keep this, Lord,

Help me keep the memory of it,

Let me be changed forever to the goodness,

Yes, even the holiness of this moment.

(Because what is this, if not sacred?)

A poem can keep it, too, and as I read back,

I feel you in the flashing memory spots,

Where touch and sight and smell,

Ignite the latent feeling of you, still alive.

There you are, rising with other wonders:

The geese, flying through basalt cliffs,

The view, after ascending Doe Mountain,

The ocean, when I had not seen the ocean.

There you are among it all, in my mind,

And I can feel your love from this far away.

One Swan, One Last Kiss of a Bee

12 Thursday May 2022

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Tags

Afterlife, Beauty, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Happiness, Hog Lake Falls, Hope, Infinite, Life, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, prairie smoke, Prayer, Sacred, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Spring, spring poem, Survival, The Universe, Truth, Yearning

Hog Lake Falls, a cool breeze,

One single, solitary swan.

I think I see him preening

From this vantage, far away.

Last time I hiked here, you’d just died,

And I thought, how lovely to know

I can bring you with me,

Free of the dying chair,

The dying bed, the whole dying room,

And house, where you’d locked yourself away.

Such days are ripe with feeling alive:

Prairie smoke droop their heads,

Their beautiful faces turned down,

As they wait for the kiss of a bee.

Then they will finally look up at the sky,

Say one last prayer, go to seed.

Dimensions Around Us, Heaven

14 Monday Mar 2022

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Tags

Afterlife, Belief, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Eternity, Heaven, Hope, Infinite, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacred, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Survival, The Universe

If there’s a heaven,

Who’s to say

It’s not right here,

Next to us,

Rather than far away?

Another dimension,

Our souls

Walk through at death,

More whole,

than in life.

Scientists say,

Our lives replay,

As we pass,

They can map

Our brain’s waves,

An almighty flash

Of memory cells,

Flashing.

What’s that about,

If not

Making us better?

And so

I talk to him,

In woods and fields,

My father,

Who loved woods

And mountaintops,

And me,

Less alone than before

He walked across,

Or flew across,

Or emerged across

The invisible line

Between life

And death,

The breadth of which,

Seems smaller

Than I knew before.

My Father, In Dreams

13 Sunday Mar 2022

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Afterlife, Death, Death Poems, Dreams, Father, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Spirits

Now, he is alive

only in dreams,

But they are vivid,

And real,

And the best of him.

Toward Our Once Bright Existence

03 Thursday Feb 2022

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Tags

Afterlife, Aging, Beauty, Belief, Children, Death, Dying, Eternity, Family, Gratitude, Hope, Life, Loss, Love, Memory, Mothers, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Spirits

In the end, we don’t know

How the end will come,

Peaceful, as we sleep,

Or, under the thumb

Of morphine. Memories,

Like flotsam, from the depths

Of our once bright existence,

Form a tunnel toward our exit,

Each day, one step closer,

Almost touching what was lost:

mother, child, father.

Promise of a New Start

15 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Afterlife, Bird Poem, Bird Poems, CoronaVirus, Courage, Covid19, Death, Dying, Forgiveness, Hope, Infinite, Life, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Spirit, Spring, Survival

“There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.” Robert Frost

Yet, they do fall, and silent, rot

beneath the changing bow.

Birds gather to peck the flesh

making less of loss,

Or perhaps, no loss at all.

You see,

the Universe claims everything

we leave behind.

Our regrets, too,

like spoiled fruit,

eventually fall away

scavenged by the sun.

Seeds are revealed

inside what we took as dead.

Trust me, next spring

there will be a new start.

I Am, Reflecting on Easter

21 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Afterlife, Creator, Crocus, Crocus poem, Daffodils, Easter, Forgiveness, hyacinth, Lilac, Poem, Poems, Poetry

I am the peace of the creator
of love, breath, forgiveness, savior
rising like crocus, and hyacinth,
daffodils, and the fattening bloom
of lilac; imagine my perfume
in the waking hours of spring.
You will place me in mason jars,
and dream of fireflies, far-off
memories of those you loved
in the vast and moldering green.








Christchurch

17 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Afterlife, Beauty, Chaos, Courage, Death, Death Poems, Division, Dying, Fear, Freedom, Hate, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, politics, Sadness. Sorrow, Soul, Spirit, Suffering

Can you be in awe

of how much some

are expected to suffer

in this lifetime—

we are often given

more than we can—

I saw a moth

with a broken wing,

and though it struggled,

I could not crush it—

but placed him, instead,

among the leaves of jasmine,

and walked away.

The Trillium in Gig Harbor

09 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Afterlife, Belief, Cedars, Death, Death Poems, Eternity, Flower Poetry, God, Hope, Infinite, Life, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Trillium, Truth, Unity, Women's Poems

O, Jamie, it’s beautiful—

everything is connected,

she said, before dying.

And Jamie thought of trillium

blossoming beneath musty cedar

at the edge of the sound,

the whole world epitomized

in heart of flowers,

and spirit of ancient,

mouldering trees.

For the Tulip Who Refuses to Die

07 Thursday Mar 2019

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Afterlife, Aging, Alone, Courage, Death, Happiness, Hope, Life, Loneliness, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Survival, Tulip, Yearning

Like the yellow tulip,

who blooms every year

in the pit behind our house,

who was dumped, long ago,

after her blossoms were spent—

yet, she screams, I’m still alive!—

every spring, among garbage

and weeds; like that tulip,

you don’t belong here.

Listening to Bernie’s Chimes

02 Saturday Mar 2019

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Afterlife, Bernie, Chimes, Death, Hope, Loss, Love, micropoetry, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Spirit, Wind

He’s been dead for four years,

but I have his chimes,

and time, like wind, passes

over their wrought iron curves,

nudging the striker,

and making its voice to sing,

ring and rise up

like message from a grave,

or another sphere,

or a person I loved,

sitting next to me, speaking.

#micropoetry

The Secret Song of the Dead

07 Monday Jan 2019

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Afterlife, aspen, Aspen Trees, Conversations With Maggie, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Eternity, Happiness, Heaven, Hope, Infinite, Life, Loss, Love, Maggie, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Winter, Winter poem

Looking back, I see you

looking back, smiling,

I say your name,

as if to summon

the dead to life,

and it works,

for a moment.

It’s winter,

and the earth feels

like your absence,

the once living things,

here, but not here.

How many times

did you sit

next to me looking

out at the aspen?

And now, here it is

bare again, waving

its naked branches again.

Today, it looks like

it’s doing The Twist,

and, I think, it hears

a song I don’t, no,

a song I can’t, hear.

Looking back, I see you

looking back, smiling,

your secrets, a dance,

a song that plays

while the world listens,

and twists to a secret melody,

it cannot hear.

The Day I Knew the Way

28 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Uncategorized

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Tags

Afterlife, Bird Poem, Bird Poems, Birds, Conversations With Maggie, Death, Death Poems, Dreams, Freedom, God, Happiness, Heaven, Hope, Infinite, Life, Love, Maggie, Memory, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Reality, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Spirits

it was a dream, and hard to tell

where borders and countries began,

but there was a dirt path,

and only I knew the way.

The dirt was soft, and the day

beautiful, I was barefoot

and running freer than ever I have

in wakened-life. It felt good

running in a warm sunshine,

ducking under the Velvet Mesquite,

with their canopies, their shade,

their branches, like open doors

to some better, magical place.

I liked the dream very much,

and could have kept running,

but I came to a lone house,

stark in the barren desert.

A blonde girl stood outside a fence,

scared and holding a gun,

and just like that,

I was shot in the arm.

I said it was a dream, didn’t I?

So, you won’t be surprised

I was impressed with her aim,

rather than the pain of being shot,

and I had to go pee.

I looked for a bathroom,

but had to wake to find one.

What is memory, I asked

later over coffee,

a little box in our brain,

a string of pictures?

How do we get there?

Memory is what we tell ourselves,

he said, about what we see

and what we feel.

You see, when Maggie died,

she passed into a prairie falcon,

she banged against windows,

day after day after day,

then left a last gift of quail,

and traveled the road of her happiness

to some place better than here.

Months later, the sun smiled,

and I ran on dirt, soft as baby powder,

passed through door after door,

on long, liquid legs, more of wing

than bone, and only I knew—

only I knew the way.

How Far It Reaches

10 Monday Sep 2018

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Uncategorized

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Tags

Afterlife, Death, Death Poems, Eternity, Hope, Infinite, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Souls, Yearning

Sometimes, missing feels like stone,

a fear that what seems over,

really is over. To be alone,

is no small thing, even though,

it seems, we always are.

Between us, an invisible thread

throws itself out, and stretches—

have you seen a silk thread

blowing itself out with the wind,

reaching, reaching—how far it reaches,

attached to nothing, but air.

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