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~ Linda R Davis, Raven of Peace & Poetry

Bits of Poetry

Tag Archives: Death

The Day I Knew the Way

28 Friday Dec 2018

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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.

The Breathing

09 Tuesday Oct 2018

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Death, Fear of Death, Horses, Life, life after death, Life and Death, Love, Peace, Perception of Time, Poem, Poems, Poetry

There is a fine line,

so skinny, so fragile;

what is,

on the other side,

breathing hard.

A horse can hear,

a deer can hear it,

but we do not,

and we live, mostly,

without fear.

Recently, the paths diverged:

what should have been,

but wasn’t,

what was,

but shouldn’t have been,

and I wonder

if those two ways,

continue in different spheres.

I  hear their breathing,

each year, stronger,

and something, like love,

pulling me there.

What is time,

but a rotation under the sun,

a perception of what has been,

a perception of moving

toward what is to come.

 

 

 

Yes, I Remember

07 Sunday Oct 2018

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Tags

Conversations With Maggie, Death, Maggie, Memory, Poem, Poems, Poetry

All memories, with death,

grow dim, but yours

grows stronger.

Dispatching An Ornery Old Goat (With Big Horns)

15 Saturday Sep 2018

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Death, Goat, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Scotty, Whimsical Poems

The ornery old goat has been dispatched,

The one with the beard and the horns,

He scared all the children, in bucking fit fevers,

And he tripped up the mares and the foals.

The ornery old goat has been dispatched,

The one who ate all of the grain,

He’d stand up beside you,

Stick a horn towards your good eye,

And make even the strong turn away.

The ornery old goat has been dispatched,

The one born more than twelve years ago.

The ornery old goat has been dispatched,

But we were sad to see him go.

How Far It Reaches

10 Monday Sep 2018

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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.

Conversations With Maggie 4

25 Saturday Aug 2018

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Afterlife, Conversations With Maggie, Death, Life, life after death, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Togetherness

Remember the years we couldn’t see

the mountains, obscured with smoke?

That’s what it will feel like,

when I’m no longer here, she said.

The mountains were still there, I said.

Conversations With Maggie 1

20 Monday Aug 2018

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Tags

Conversations With Maggie, Death, Loss, Love, Maggie, Poem, Poems, Poetry

1.

She said, Your heart is like the wind;

never feel it’s being used up by love.

There is always more, and more, 

And, at the end of it all, there is more.

Maybe, it’s like the stars, I said.

 

 

Song of the Orange Butterfly, In-Between Shores

29 Sunday Jul 2018

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Tags

Butterflies, Butterfly, Columbia River, Death, Life, mud swallows, Poem, Poems, Poetry, River, Rivers, Swallows, transformation

I am sun off water,

spirit, which takes form

Through transformation.

Metamorphosis:

Lowest belly creature,

To this fairytale life.

Yet, I am lost,

Somehow wandered

Between safe shores.

Water everywhere.

And the mud swallows,

Who make their nests

In the river banks,

Desperate for me.

You see, a pretty thing

Can suffer, too:

Frantic beating of wing.

In this short life,

I will both sing,

And cease to be.

The Place Between Us

17 Tuesday Apr 2018

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Tags

Afterlife, Claudia Emerson, Death, Heaven, Horses, Love, Palomino, Poem, Poems, Poetry

      I crossed

That field, weeks before the first pass of the blade,

     Through grass and briars, fog–the night itself

to my thighs, my skirt pulled up that high.

(Claudia Emerson, excerpt from Aftermath)

Today, I stood in the south pasture and looked back at the house,

as if it was another life I was seeing from the outside:

the gables, the stone facade, the windows, the aspen.

The palomino came to me there, and seemed of two worlds.

She crossed over the basalt outcroppings,

her hooves crushing the baby grass and buttercups,

like a bold spirit that moved between life and death

and made me wonder, for a moment, which I inhabited,

or what was real, the house, the horse, the wind, my body–

the words I searched for, to say how much I miss you.

Loping a Horse For the First Time

14 Saturday Apr 2018

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Tags

Chaos, Death, Feeling Alive, Horse Poems, Horse poetry, Horses, Life, Loping, Poem, Poems, Poetry

To straddle that fundamental duality is to be balanced: to have one foot firmly planted in order and security, and the other in chaos…” Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules For Life

At first,

They may try to buck,

But give them the reins

And sit deep in the saddle.

Like everything in life,

No guarantees,

We’re all on the bottom peg,

Really,

When it comes to living,

Or dying,

Or even breaking a leg.

Loping a green horse

Isn’t much different

Than falling in love,

Or growing old.

We like to feel alive,

Sometimes,

We like to fly

On the back of a horse

Learning to run,

With chaos on her back.

Unity: Horse and Human Together

05 Thursday Apr 2018

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Tags

Death, Fear, Freedom, Happiness, Heaven, Horses, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Togetherness, Tom Dorrance, Unity

“Try to figure out some way to understand this thing the horse is so full of, and that he has such a strong desire to get from the person in return. It has to be togetherness. Mind, Body and Spirit is what we’re talking about here.” Tom Dorrance, True Unity

Our shared emotion,

Seventeen of twenty-seven:

Happiness, worry, fear.

What is it, rising up

Like spirit, from your eyes,

Like heaven. An open field,

Where all that matters is love

And connection, knowing

We are safe from what chases,

Knowing we are strong,

mistakes forgotten, and free.

Fear

22 Thursday Mar 2018

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aspen, Brook, Chimes, Death, Early Spring, Fear, Night Terror, Nightmares, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Roses, Spring, spring poem, Unknown, Willow, Wind

I’ll describe early spring,

because it’s easier

than describing fear:

waking at one a.m.

in a terrible dream.

Where are you?

Why don’t you answer?

It’s forty degrees,

and the wind is rattling

the darkness and the chimes.

Everything is touched:

the willow, the aspen, and the roses

just beginning to break

into the tiniest buds.

Yet, still bare, still silent,

still waving their branches,

like I see you, waving your arms.

3. Moss

18 Sunday Mar 2018

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Death, Life, Moss, Palisades Park, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Waterfalls, Youth

Nineteen and unbreakable,

Because there was always something

To catch onto when he fell,

Until yesterday.

I guess it’s true: Desperation reaches

For whatever it can, whatever

Presents itself a savior.

Could be a rock, a branch,

Anything, at the right time.

It’s not surprising,

He reached for the moss

As his foot began to slip

From the waterfall’s slick face.

The moss,

Only an arm’s reach away,

Easy to touch,

But unable to stop his fall.

What is Aleppo?

15 Thursday Dec 2016

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Tags

Aleppo, Death, Freedom, Poem, Poetry, StoptheKilling

“We didn’t want anything else but freedom.

This world doesn’t like freedom.”

Abdulkafi Alhamdo, Professor of English, Last Call from Aleppo

What is Aleppo?

All that it was, or dreamed to be,

In rubble. Have you seen rubble?

It’s what hope looks like when it’s collapsed,

Reduced to broken chunks of asphalt

And twisted, distorted beams of rebar.

It’s brown. Not dark brown, but light brown,

The color of dust.

There is no truth, but suffering,

And the realization no help is coming–

No haloed army, no golden trumpets,

No white horses or heroes.

The choices you made,

In your heart of hearts,

Choice, like stone in your heart,

That is Aleppo now–

Stone in your heart.

 

Connection

17 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Uncategorized

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Tags

Afterlife, Balance, Death, Eternity, Horses, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Space

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Sit deep, deep in the saddle,

Your ankle, hip, and shoulder

A line, that dissects some star

And continues past,

“Where does space end,”

The question your teacher asked

In the fifth grade.

Which is to say, it never ends,

And I can’t help thinking,

I don’t either,

Nor does this horse,

Engulfed in her own heat,

Evaporating into the cold air

Of another December.

What is it about two souls

That makes the one feel alive,

Connected, two dots, through which

A line extends forever,

Pierces a fabric, so thin,

We were together all along,

Though we didn’t know.

 

 

 

The Barn Swallows, Drowned In the Trough

29 Wednesday Jul 2015

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Barn Swallows, Bird Drowning, Birds, Death, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Spiders, Swallows

I can’t bring death to a world

Where everything dies.

Not even a spider in the front eve,

Its shadow, at night, a good five inches.

It scares the hell out of me,

But how can I fault her,

For dropping down, thread by thread,

And spinning her web.

I can’t add her death

To a world where everything dies.

And yet, I pulled two dead barn swallows

From the galvanized trough by the barn.

I regret, the shallow Victorian bird bath

I wouldn’t purchase, for fear

I’d lure the precious birds to our cat.

Despite trying to avoid bringing death,

It came anyway,

To a world where everything dies.

For Bernie

28 Tuesday Jul 2015

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Tags

Aging, Breast Cancer, Cancer, Death, Death Poems, Dirge Without Music, Edna St Vincent Millay, Gardens, Poem, Poems, Poetry, prostate cancer, Shadow of Death

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love–
They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled
Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.

(Dirge Without Music, Edna St. Vincent Millay)

The Fall came in shadows,

The poetry,

Cancers of breast and prostate,

The tumor in the child’s lung,

By December it emerged

Another way, unpredicted,

Because who can predict death?

Fierce and final,

I would say it ravished,

But that would imply he may have lived.

And he didn’t.

What’s the word for being all gone,

The home you built, inhabited by strangers,

Growing cucumbers and tomatoes

In the garden you put away?

Did you think you’d see April,

The planting of the seeds?

Or July, with its harvest?

New hands take up old work,

And so, it goes on without us.

After a short time, even memory,

Struggles to keep us alive.

The Number of Our Days

29 Friday May 2015

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Uncategorized

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Tags

average life span of humans, Cancer, Death, Dying, Poem, Poems, Poetry, prostate cancer

From our first breath,

Straight from the womb,

We average twenty five thousand

Nine hundred fifteen days,

Of welcoming the sun,

Falling asleep under the moon.

You can buy a car for that much,

But it won’t have leather,

Or a back-up camera,

Or, probably GPS.

His doctor said, two and half years,

The average in late stage prostate cancer,

But I like to think,

Nine hundred twelve and a half days.

Nine hundred twelve times

To welcome the sun,

Nine hundred twelve times

To fall asleep under the moon

And a half day left over,

To dream about both.

Death Is For Later

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

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Tags

Breath, Breathing, Death, George Strait, Poem, Poems, Poetry

Life’s not the breath you take,
The breathing in and out
That gets you through the day
Ain’t what it’s all about.
You just might miss the point
Trying to win the race.
Life’s not the breaths you take,
But the moments
That take your breath away.

George Strait

 

3.

Have you ever noticed the beauty

Of a star-filled winter night,

Your breath radiant,

Twinkling in fine, frozen mist.

The quiet,

That’s not quiet, really,

But stillness:

Your heart beating,

Your cheeks stinging,

Your life framed amidst tree-shadows,

Moon whispers,

And incredible, fathomless wonder

At being alive.

 

 

Death Is (2)

13 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Uncategorized

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Tags

Consolation, Death, Eternity, Poem, Poems, Poetry

2.

The words of those who’ve also lost:

I believe Death is final.

All we have is the Time.

Then he asks,

How could it not be so?

Does he want us to argue?

We really can’t say.

Another, You’ll feel him near you.

I promise, the sting goes away.

 

 

 

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