Tag: Hope

Let Me Put It This Way

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

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Let Me Put It This Way

The fetal position was an option
Always
But so was one foot in front of the other
If you read this, say, 50 years from now
You should know
There were poets
Taking the pulse of grief

Of the world
Off the chart
Into unchartered red zones of grief

Weeping in unison drowns sorrow
Buoys the soul
Your shoulder a lifesaver
You shoulder a life and weep with those who weep
And write to tell about it

Catch your breath there is more to come
Save some tears for the next go round
And

Hope
Always

Love, everlasting
More

My tears speak French and Southern and pain
Fluent in make it stop
Last week and the week before that
And this
Drain the spirit and weaken the pulse
But joy
Transfusions of joy
Attend the anemic and weary world

Number two pencil, low on lead
Computer cartridge out of ink
Pens spent
The ebony ink  flowed its last drop
Words, written elude me
The timing could not be any worse
But can you hear my heart

Oral traditions of story telling would do well
To come back from the grave
Would you listen amid all the cries of pain
And tears of valid weeping
Lamentations of  Biblical proportion
Are on the rise

Would you hear the story of hope

I had to share my joy with pain
And pain with joy
My humanness binds me to your wounds
Humanity spans the globe
Crosses the Atlantic, The North, The South

The weary world hangs its collective head and cries
Sunken heads bent downward sink the spirit like the Titantic
Pain is our iceberg

And the spectrum of human emotion
Immeasurable, unfathomable
Mourning and grieving
Crying out, is it morning yet
Mercy, is it morning
Yet

And Jesus wept
And surely He is weeping still

Lord have mercy
I speak Southern and am becoming fluent in
Make it stop

Grace

 

 

 

 

Omega

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

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Omega

Eight lost, some stillborn
Others born, still lost
Sons and daughters of Willow
One remains or so we believe
Alpha and the in-between-ones
Are all gone
Our deposit has not been sent
Hope is a currency all its very own

We are uncovering poetry
It’s what remains now
Well into her eighties
Grief grinds its way through
Those of us remaining
She deposited words
Like shiny gold coins
Rare
Into the safest of places
Poetry, her currency

Page after aging, age-less page
Reveal what Agnes’ life did not
To me

Distance and years
Wedges like a bank vault wall
Kept me at bay

She never knew that mother penned
“For Elizabeth our aspiring poet”
On the inside of Oliver’s “Evidence”

Surprise would have attended us both
That pens are passed into spheres of
The unknown

And just after we grieved for a good long while
The gone-ness grew
The no-going-back-ness
The place where the mind comes back from a long hiatus into dementia
Just to hear “I loved you”
And now
Your poetry

Omega was the last
Black English Cocker puppy
Born alive
In Oklahoma

A sign that one of nine
Remains
For us
A sign of hope
At eight weeks
Omega, should she live
(Meg for short)
Comes to live with us
Eight others rest in peace

Epiphanies born from death
Poetic embalming of her secrets
Now shared
Beauty birthed on every page
Life revealed in death

I cannot crown my favorite line of hers
(It may take a lifetime of catching up to dog-ear my favorite page)
Alpha and omega
And poetry in the in-between’s
She rests in peace
I wrestle with regret and grief

She wrestled with life
And turned it into poetry

 

 

 

In The Middle Of Grief

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

In The Middle Of Grief

No start here’s demarcated for convenience, clearly
Black and white signage gone missing
Like a crucial stop sign stolen by the juvenile for wall art in their dorm

No lesson plan, well bullet-pointed, yellow Sharpie highlighted
Key points in bold to guide you
Clear as water, bought and paid for

No manual, though plenty of truisms
“Grief shared is grief diminished”
Comes to mind amid the grief

No terra firma
Safe harbors
Ports in the storm for the rocking boat

For the raw time being
In the beginning there is death, and we are parted
Dearly departed, we
Until the healing begins

And you begin to move through the arc of grief
Slow, not steady
Like an 8th grader, in Calculus class
Over their head, up to their mascara heavy, eye-shadow laden eyeballs
In deep

Walking to the grave helps
Just don’t watch me grieve
You told me all I need to know
I was loved
I loved
Well

There is no middle
There is no end
The circle is never broken

Ashes to ashes, dust to dusk
And then the bell rings
Time’s up, pencils down

It is well to remember
You were loved
You loved
Well

The circle of love is never broken, friend
Your bark has made it’s mark on me

 

 

 

 

A Triptych

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

heart bright in wood

One

It is a strange thing, your leaving
In increments
This slow fade, pains us
The dialing down and dialing back
I wish for your speedy recovery
That you would return to us
It is a strange thing, your leaving. like a dismantling
We are all coming apart at the seams
I never liked one thousand two hundred and fifty piece jigsaw puzzles
Now I like them even less
Pieces are missing from what I can see of you
This slow fade, pains me
I watched you leave us slowly
Someone took the big fat pink eraser to your mind
Long minutes of searching drag by
And you’re still unable to find that lost piece of your vocabulary
The elusive word “chipmunk” escapes
Cruel game of cat and mouse of the mind
But peace attends us in its mercurial way
In a blink we are somehow fine with it all
A fractured picture
It looks nothing now like the photo on the box
Somehow, it looks like this
It is how we are meant to be
Hinged to the past by ligament and thread
Bone and blood
I will be your memory
And you will always be mine

Two

August has come with her goodbyes
I count and recount
Pack mules on every corner
Of every street, the scene repeated
A stuttering and stammering of goodbye
A grand exodus of fallen leaves
And gardens burned past recognition
Once full of promise
Now the leaving has begun
Can you see me waving my hand in hope
Of what will come
I know a secret of these cycles
Spun round more than once
I know the story’s end
The one this Earth is writing

Three

I seemed to think you would remain
Laden with fruit
A freak, an anomaly
Bearing forever
Always dripping with abundance
Your branches
Like a run-on-sentence
No break in the chain of goodness
A train-wreck of the overflow
And last time I checked
You bore one, singular and sweet
A parting gift for your beloved
For that I am grievous
That it is over
The faucet stopped its once endless flow
I let myself think it would never end
For that
I am a fool in the shadow of your love