Tag Archives: Death Poems

A Hope For Something Better

24 Tuesday May 2022

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Would our lives be better

If we paid attention

Each drip drip

Each rustle and bow of leaves

The branches of the pine are dancing

To a song in 4/4 time

So is the purple sand cherry, dancing

Clouds upon clouds upon clouds

Let me describe them:

flat, dark bottoms, mountainous tufts

Bodies extending far into the sky

For sun, sun lighting up their top halves

I should say, the earth side is ominous

The heavenward side, radiant

Would you know what I mean

Today, of all days

When so many innocent are dead

Why wouldn’t they turn their eyes away

And hope for something better

How We Keep It

23 Monday May 2022

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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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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, and go to seed.

The Knowing Alone

01 Friday Apr 2022

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They say,

There are five stages to grief;

All, feel terrible;

Where’s the relief?

When can we expect

To accept the loss of being

Who we were together.

The knowing alone–

Is that it, the end;

Is it final?

Mending spirit,

Where are you now?

Are the returning birds

Too loud to hear?

The Sun, too bright

To see?

The wind, too cold

To feel you?

Dimensions Around Us, Heaven

14 Monday Mar 2022

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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.

The Edges Begin to Blur

02 Sunday Jan 2022

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A fog over the snow-covered hills

Of the Palouse, loosed delineation

Of hill and road and sky,

It seemed an infinity of cloud,

A shroud, over our eyes,

As we returned from a ‘last visit,’

The one where we said ‘goodbye.’

A great chain is about to snap,

The ties that bind crackle,

Grow weak, tremble, cry:

This too shall pass, everything must die,

But at last, we don’t believe it’s true,

Do we? Life is all we’ve known,

And its roads extend for our ever,

And ‘our ever,’ doesn’t come to a tidy end,

But it does begin to blur at the edges.

Preparing for Infinity

25 Saturday Dec 2021

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In his last days, he contemplates this:

In the multiverse, our universe,

In the universe, our galaxy,

In the galaxy, our solar system,

And in that, our planet,

Where you find us,

Small as we are,

Celebrating

What it means to be eternal,

To join the stars,

To become one with love,

Two points on a line,

That extend forever.

The Chimes of Winter

23 Thursday Dec 2021

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The chimes of summer,

Are the same chimes as winter,

Hear them dangle their tangled songs,

As we wait for the cold snap,

As we waited through the heat wave,

As the birds sang, and died,

As the dog died,

As everything waits to die now,

Snatched in snow and cold.

Our lives play out,

The seasons bang on,

The seasons leave behind,

Like some great train,

With its clang and clack,

Plowing through snow and rain,

Unloading its passengers.

Song of Sorrow and Joy: 4

11 Saturday Dec 2021

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IV

Sit, and let me sing you a song,

Of our perfection,

And our imperfections:

No species sucks so bad

At getting what we want—

I’ll title it, Love.

Realization must come

Too late, or it’s not human.

Only in losing do we understand

The full measure of what we had,

Basically, chances, and with chance,

The opportunity to grasp —

It—

And I’m back to the title of the song—

Love,

And how we suck at it.

Song of Sorrow and Joy: 3

11 Saturday Dec 2021

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III

And now, I pause

at the feet of your memory:

Your laughter,

before there was nothing

To laugh about,

Your strength,

Your fatal optimism in your strength.

I’ve learned,

Being a rock, a steady hand

Wasn’t always conducive

To being a full man.

And there is the regret,

(Mine, not yours),

But it’s too late for regrets.

We are who we are,

And so little escapes that reality;

What forms us,

Forms all others, formed me.

Sometimes, we are left to weep

at what could have been:

We could have called,

We could have written,

We could have cherished,

The moments we came

Wanting to be cherished.

I misspoke,

When I said imperfections fade away–

They don’t,

But there is no anger,

Only a dull futility:

The reality that is, versus

What we hoped it would be.

Song of Sorrow and Joy: 2

11 Saturday Dec 2021

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II.

I’ve seen enough of spirit to know

that you’ll still be here

when I write of letting go.

How love becomes energy,

And energy can’t be destroyed.

The power of memory:

Imperfections, fade away,

Only Love remains,

As a steady anchor,

A steady hand through—

It’s been a while

since I’ve seen you laugh,

(There’s not much joy in dying,)

Yet, I remember your laughter, too,

Your tears wiped away from crying.

And it makes me smile now,

How we watched you break down,

Such a serious father,

Completely undone

By your laughter.

Song of Sorrow and Joy

10 Friday Dec 2021

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“Once I heard a song of sweetness,

As it cleft the morning air,

Sounding in its blest completeness,

Like a tender, pleading prayer;

And I sought to find the singer,

Whence the wondrous song was borne,

And I found a bird, sore wounded,

Pinioned by a thorn.”

I.

The song of joy comes

From the same place as sorrow:

All losses bound together

With all gifts,

Wonder and tragedy,

Sifted, then mixed.

I will hurt no more, I said,

And it was as if my soul

Was dead to happiness, too.

But now I stand,

Ready to let go of you.

These Silent Months

05 Sunday Dec 2021

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These silent months:

No keys

Struck,

No strings

Plucked,

Or strummed,

No words strung together

To write a poem.

Said another way,

Everything that heals

Has faded away.

Yet, here I am again

Trying to make sense

Of the void.

Loss,

There is so much to lose,

We are willing to toss away now.

Have I tossed away now–

The joy of now–

Because I am afraid of losing?

Letting go, letting go, letting go…

Keep saying that,

One hundred times,

Then more.

Wolfhound Mourns our Wolfhound

24 Sunday Oct 2021

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I watch my wolfhound mourn

the loss of our wolfhound.

Her sighs, like cries,

a wheezing must of being alone.

The certainty of death:

A large hole we dug

To lay his body.

Hole covered,

It’s now a patch of dirt

Among a browning grass.

Such loss does not get easier.

Did you think it would?

Day four,

And she still cries in her sleep.

I join, and cry for her,

for him, for me,

for constantly losing good things,

noble things,

Beings, we so wanted

To keep.

Knowing How To Fall

13 Friday Aug 2021

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“I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down –”

I will trace your body with my fingers,

I will kneel before you with cupped hands,

Because that’s what it is to love,

To memorize this moment we inhabit,

To see your chest rise and fall

In mutual breath and beating hearts.

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? 

All those who have passed, there,

beyond the smoke, is the mountain:

Minutes, seconds, days, and months

Turn to years, but always the mountain,

Who recognizes only eternity.

And here, we embrace in its shadow,

Speak words, like living things do.

Comfort, does it comfort you

to hear your name spoken from my lips,

To know, someone will fall down

When you’re gone?

*Italics are verses from, The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver

A Hideous Brightness

13 Sunday Jun 2021

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Drought year,

Everything is dying early.

We realize what is hearty,

And what is not.

Weeds, they multiply,

Even after we spray,

As if they know,

This is their time.

They sink taproots,

And suckle what is left

Of underground aquifers.

We’re breaking heat records in June;

The sweltering, unrelenting sun

Is just getting started.

How many trips to the barn,

Down this cackling road?

The day I saw the barn cat

Kill father Robin–

It was an ominous sign

For the foal.

And then I succumbed

To this hackling cough.

Death is a time for prayer,

Calling out

for whatever hope God can spare.

Cries sent, not into a dark night,

But a hideous brightness.

Blood In the Air

26 Tuesday Jan 2021

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If air could bleed,

the space between us

would, indeed, pour out.

Hate is a balm

for our hurt,

and the danger

we fear,

becomes anger.

My dear,

Are we beyond healing?

Or, is there yet

a latent spark

of forgiveness?

Remember when

we so easily embraced:

bone against bone,

a crushing lust,

our mutual love.

But now there’s dust,

and if the space between

could bleed,

it would drown us.