Sometimes I forget how powerful poetry can be. Then I find a lovely book like Beloved On the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude, and resolve to read poems more often and share them with others.
Brought together by editors Jim Perlman, Deborah Cooper and Mara Hart, this anthology includes work by poets you’ve heard of and ones you’ll be happy to discover. The book takes its title from a line in Raymond Carver’s poem, “Late Fragment.”
I was pleased to find the book includes two poems by writers I know personally. The idea for Colorado poet Marj Hahne’s poem, “Afterglow,” came to her when she learned that “the stars we see in the night sky may actually be dead stars, but because those stars were light years away, the light is only now finally reaching Earth.”
Writing poetry has made Hahne more conscious of the world she is creating and whether her words are constructive or destructive. “I see my personal healing as inseparable from the collective healing,” Hahne says. “I feel an ultimate accountability to the latter when I write.” She has taught poetry writing at over 100 venues around the country and has been featured on public radio and television. Visit her website at www.marjhahne.com.
Judith Prest is a retired social worker who has done creativity and healing work since 1998. She has a certificate in Expressive Art Therapy from New York Expressive Arts Studio in Albany NY.
Her poem, “Allowing Grace,” is about the death of her mother. Prest took care of her mother with the help of nurses and hospice, taking a leave of absence from her job to be with her mother in another state.
“When I can write about loss it is always healing” Prest says. “Writing has saved my life and has helped me keep my sanity, finally get sober AND to keep my sobriety for over 7 years now. Writing and art and my creative side are my LIFE LINE and my passion is bringing that work to others so they can use their creativity to help heal all manner of hurts…”
Beloved on the Earth was published in June 2009 by Holy Cow Press. Reviewers have recommended it for reading in hospice and at memorial services. It can be ordered through any bookstore or online through Amazon.com.
Afterglow
A man asks his wife, disappearing
in a hospital bed, to call home once
more, leave a message on the machine
so he will always have her
voice when she’s gone.
Her voice
played, played
again will be something
like light from a star
dead for who-knows-how-many light
years from its own swallowed air—
what’s left
is black and splendor, a glimmer reaching out
to the living.
Something
like their first night, all
body and liquid and vapor—
the spark, flash lasting
long after the collapse.
Marj Hahne
Allowing Grace
I am dancing
balanced on the edge
between worlds,
memories telescoping
playing simultaneously
with dreams and reality
a festival of images
I accept death
inviting it as a beginning
I am watching my mother’s illusions
collapse around her
piling high in the hospital bed
filling the space so she barely has room
I am watching her hang on,
hands clawed with arthritis,
frozen on the wheel of her life
grasping, seeking,
resisting…
I sing lullabies in my head
I float above the room
out the window, between bare branches
follow the river of migrating blackbirds,
rise with the moon
dance with the wind
Somewhere the child I was is wailing
I grieve the loss of mother
accept that for now I am mothering her
and myself as well
I hold her hands
feel the bones so near the surface
sense her spirit not yet unbound
release my claim on her being
releasing with love
enduring, dreaming, dancing with spirit
I imagine heartbeats: hers fainter, mine steady
all centered, aligned with the universe
praying for patience, praying for endurance
praying for the gift of
allowing grace.
— Judith Prest
Tags: grief, hope, signs and connections
