Laura McCullough: Hero With Only One Face
He tells me in his diminishing days, death not yet active,
but clearly begun, about his siblings, family shufflings,
foster homes, the orphanage. Who said they would
but then could not, who promised this & forgot that
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: An Open Thank You Letter to Kristen Who Works at the Cemetery
There are moments so flooded with tenderness
every wall around our heart collapses
from the beauty of it
Gary Fincke: A Murder of Crows
Driving home, I see all of them
By the highway, pecking at
Whatever is splayed out and torn
Wayne Karlin: Butch in Autumn
Run ahead again,
old friend,
I’ll catch up with you later.
Arlene Weiner: Pinky
Last week I took a shovel from a prepared heap,
scooped earth easily, turned, threw it
onto your coffin, plain pine.
Elizabeth Gargano: Why We Should Try Talking to the Dead
After my father’s death, my mother kept talking to him.
Elizabeth Romero: The Next Big Thing
Oh, beautiful death from the sky!
Please, do not strike me
Or my dark tree.
Paul Christensen: The Journey We All Must Take
When you’re a knee-scabbed, scruffy looking kid, a tree-climbing ruffian hanging from the neighbor’s crab apple tree and running away from some irate neighbor after soaping up his car windshield, on Halloween, you don’t know it but you are the unacknowledged expert of what it means to be living in your pre-pubescent body.
Tony Gloeggler: Social Story
how happy and lucky
it made us feel to know
we had someone we loved
who loved us back
Video: The Beetle at the End of the Street
In this Fellini-esque comedy, a psychic fishmonger foresees Amadeo’s death, so his fellow villagers rally to give him the best final seven days for which one could ask.
Bruce Lowry: Just Long Enough
My desire is only this—to die someplace the earth made beautiful all on its own, the way a first-grader makes the morning glory out of construction paper and Elmer’s glue, … Continue reading
Adrienne Maree Brown: Breaking is part of healing
I was in a conversation recently with a friend who had just returned from a meditation retreat. She said one of the ideas shared with her group was that “the teacup is already broken,” a meditation on how the death or ending or brokenness we fear is inevitable.
Rupert Brooke: The Fish
O world of lips, O world of laughter,
Where hope is fleet and thought flies after,
Of lights in the clear night, of cries
That drift along the wave and rise
Doug Anderson: We Get Old, We Get Sick
How we stumble, are glib
in the face of our fear
when we might show
our own raw heart
Vox Populi 