Friday, May 30, 2014

Day 90: When Great Trees Fall


Maya Angelou died yesterday. A surrogate mother, sister, and friend to more people than I can imagine. A woman of good counsel, strong spirit, and gifted with words. I think about all of the people missing her today. The emptiness left which is felt because of her great presence while she was here.

I've been missing Gareth a lot in the last few days and really feeling the empty places created by his absence. I am, as I was recently reminded, a spiritual being experiencing my humanity. We have this great capacity to love. And a great capacity to feel loss. I am gutted by both at the moment.

Maya Angelou and Gareth never met, of course, but something tells me she would have loved his humanness. She would have gazed upon his face with all of that love and acceptance pouring out of her and he would have wrapped himself up in it. She would have understood his struggles and delighted in the way he used poetry to remain tethered. I just know this is true.

I think about her, I think about him, when I read her poem "When Great Trees Fall." Here is someone who knew grief, and had enough in her lifetime to completely flatten her. And still she rose. Like dust, she rose. Like air, she rose. She rose. She rose. She rose.

As will I. As will all who are going through their day, mourning their losses, existing as two people: the one who laughs at a casual joke, bends down to greet a dog, and makes it through a work day, and the one who is deadened inside, wishing to dissolve into the empty spaces threatening to swallow them whole. We will rise. Like dust, we will rise. Like air, we will rise. We will rise. We will rise. We will rise.  

"They existed," she reminds us.  "
They existed./ We can be. Be and be/ better. For they existed."

p.s. Ms. Angelou- Gareth loved nothing more than to sit down and collaborate on a good piece of writing. You know...if you get the time.  




When Great Trees Fall

Maya Angelou

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.




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