I’ll sing the songs you taught me in glades of diaphanous Light. I’ll be the kindness you gave me, on dark and lonely nights.
Your footprints in the forests, still wash up on distant shores, the starlight that enabled me to join with earth’s encore…
You dance on weary mornings with light-beams across my room, with visions that re-awaken me from this wholly tiresome gloom!
Keep shining in my daytime keep holding me when we cry, be the presence I always seek, be the softness of pale blue Skies…
You are the colors at sunset the rainbow’s gentle promise, you are the transfiguration, my quiet vows of solace…
There is no forgetting, no time for remorse, when death and sorrow visit us and clutter up our thoughts…
I’ll sing songs of redemption, and paint on a smile, honor your beautiful memory born from what was wild…
The truth is we’ve been here before, when darkness covered the waters, we’ll return again someday armed with what God taught us…
Forgiveness will be easy and love will forever find the beauty that awakened us, carefully refined…
My son Stevie changed worlds 4 years ago today. He is always with me, still one of my greatest teachers. We have spent many lifetimes together and we will be together again, I have been assured of that…
“I thought: maybe death isn’t darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us— as soft as feathers— that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes not without amazement, and let ourselves be carried, as through the translucence of mica, to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow— that is nothing but light—scalding, aortal light— in which we are washed and washed out of our bones.” ― Mary Oliver
Stevie went to many places in the world, but he always said Jerusalem was one of his favorite cities… He walked in the steps of Jesus there!
Four years ago, today was my last day on earth with you. It seems like yesterday that we sat all day and talked about so much. We even talked about how we would want to die, you said you would prefer to die in your sleep rather than suffer for a long time. Your wish was granted and the next day you went to sleep and woke up in heaven.
Memories are sometimes like shards of pain splintering and falling in waves over me. I am taken to those dark places just so as I can feel the hurt and know I’m still alive and breathing. Holding your memory in my flesh and blood.
I know you were never meant to stay; I know that now, but on that day, I thought it would never end and we would be together until I went into my dotage.
It was a day of remembrance, a sacred day, I even forgot to hang the washing on the line. Everything seemed urgent, things needed to be said. You told me so much, you forgave me and everyone who had ever wronged you.
On looking back, I am grateful you came on this journey with me, and even if it seemed like just a stopover for you, it was really a lifetime for me.
I knew all your sorrow, and you knew mine. We both understood how much we needed to be loved and accepted, just like everyone else on this planet.
Things happen, people stray, some didn’t understand the struggle you went through. You came here as my teacher, to show me how to forgive, to show me the very depths of what it means to never hold a grudge, I’m still learning. I haven’t perfected it yet, I’m a work in progress.
I have learned so much since you left your earth suit, you continue to show me a way out of the darkness, to reconnect me with what is truly holy.
You used to say that it’s a beautiful thing when people are honest about their hurts, their failures, their “humanness”. Some didn’t understand you, the depths of your soul seemed strange to them. Many called you “sentimental Stevie” because you felt things so deeply. Sometimes you even took on the pain of the lost and broken. Your Indian friends called you Satish, which means “truthful god”, you always felt honored by that name.
You still visit many places and many people that you love, and I know they still see you, even if it is only in the shadows…
You wrote this poem in a place called “Heartland”. It was a place where you discovered other imperfect humans living off the land and they loved and treasured you just as you were. it was and still is a place of holy ground!
A Thousand Moonlit Nights
The deepest part of my soul lies dormant, hidden in the shadows of a myriad of masks, no eye has seen it and no hand can reach it, unknown, unseen, and untouched.
Light has now reached it and air has finally found it, my fellows have unmasked the masked man. I stand naked in the moonlit garden, free yet secure under an array of stars.
Dawn is coming, followed by the heat of the sun, Do I stay or go, fight or flight? Or rather duck and cover? I will cover.
Maybe tomorrow night will be a full moon, maybe more will join me in the garden. I am on a journey of a thousand moonlit nights, walking with a few brave souls under the stars.
We come to this place where you look back – you have been present for days! – embodied concern that says a thousand words.
You walk everywhere with us, your celestial footprints marking the path.
It is winter here and in the spring the butterflies will not forget.
In choosing now the words, won’t you help us to sing a song of freedom – we cannot control the pain, the grief only going limp into it, surrender to something bigger – captured in the Redemption Song.
“I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.” ― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
Side-walk sensations spring from the cracks, beauty remains and whimsically attracts…
Some of us don’t notice and walk on by, some of us kneel on the ground to surely testify… that the search for beauty can change colorless moods, and return us to the joy of carefree attitudes…
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” ― Reinhold Niebuhr
There was hope on the horizon real hope, hope shaped like normality, but it burst and all its innards spewed out in lost dreams…
they say that hope deferred makes the heart sick, and it does it really does, like an affliction moving over me a slow creep, a contamination and life becomes quite shallow….
So, I collect myself in splattered rooms where hope is laid bare and I pick myself up…
I turn again to gratitude I keep turning until it sees me I keep counting every blessing until I lose count…
surrendering to what I cannot change… right now all I need is wisdom and courage!!
because the sky is still blue, the seas never stop moving and all around me is the sound of beautiful hearts beating…
I enter into love and I always find kindness there!
Recently, the mouth of our river was manually breached. It was holding back flood-waters, the stench was growing, people on low-lying lands were afraid… it had to be released! Though some sea life was lost with the flow, the relief was palpable. It made me think of my own bottled-up pain.
I may seem happy but inside I’m broken. I search the skyways and highways for you I look at the stars and hope you’ll shine on me.
The world sometimes dims to an unbelievable low, I can hardly see through the mists of my mind.
your memories are etched into every particle of my being.
You belonged to me once before madness came into the world and turned it upside down. When love really was enough!!
I dance when I’m broken open I dance through this pain. When twilight descends and I’m completely soaked through with sadness. I reach into my brokenness and breathe in the sweet sounds of evening…
The night-birds usher me back to beauty, bullfrogs return me to praise!
Sometimes I cry at first light, letting the waters of heaven rush through me so I can flow again with the winds and ride again on tides of hope…
At dawn, I have thoughts that won’t let me be, they startle me their wounding is real! Like invaders waiting at the door I get ambushed by grief.
Words have legs they carry me back to moonrise, they fly with me to the sun… Sometimes they saturate me in favor, other-times they sting me to death…
I must give them credence for they have the power to hurt me beyond recognition. I must let them out or they will hold me hostage.
I will release them as tears, to spring forth from the deep and go back to where love overflows…
I can’t catch my tears or hold them, they must fuse with the ether and return to heaven, to be gathered and kept forever in jars, until I too shall return…
They are my memories, they come from my inner being and like floodgates opening they water arid lands of sorrow …
And for just a tiny moment I will wallow in pity, I will cry out at what has been lost, Yet I will still bathe in the beauty of what is…
I am forever hoping to be emptied of the sorrow that lives inside me… But I know my tears must return, for grief must speak volumes otherwise, love would not be visible…
AllysoAlly 