Poetry can give an insight to the soul of the writer. Or the reader. Poetry can touch on the feelings you don't want to admit to, and those you wish you could celebrate. On life. On time. On what it is to be you.
Here's Pieces of Me, a poetic intros...
With the faintest of sighs With the flutter of eyes With the releasing of pain Angels whisper your name
While life weighed on your shoulders A burden endured When the angels are calling You suffer no more
When the darkness encroaches With a beckoning hand You leave life behind you For a long promised land
Where those loved And those lost Are brought together again And where the tears Are of happiness To fall as our rain
In our hearts you'll live always So goodnight sweet princess May flights of bright golden angels Sing thee to thy rest
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This is one of the hardest poems I've ever had to write. It is also one of the hardest I've had to read and this is why I'm choosing it to be the first in this collection. A Song of Angels was written for my mother's funeral and I read it to the small congregation. It's not often that I am stuck for words when writing something. If I am, the smallest prompt, such as a word or sentence or picture can easily kick it off. For this poem, none of that worked.
My mother died unexpectedly on New Years Eve of 2018. She'd been battling cancer for a year and a half and hadn't told any of us. I wanted to write something as a tribute for her, but the blank page stared write back at me. Finally, I started to write, and it was really a case of one word after another, with each reaching out to the one that would follow. A Song of Angels was written, as are many of my poems, in one sitting. The final lines are paraphrased from Shakespeare's Hamlet and were part of the speech my brother gave, also at the funeral.
Death is a part of life, of course, and it's inescapable. For all of you who has lost someone close, I'm sending a virtual hug.
