Solace for the Newly Bereaved

What holds Sorrow and Joy in its lap?
‘Setsunai’ implies what has faded from
brightness, what can’t quite be recalled,
beyond knowing that everything passes.
Snow dropping on snow-spangled trees.

We share this deep new reality for
which no words suffice…maybe one
in Japanese, expressing the loss of
ten thousand things. Something quiet
in the snow, snow, the silencing snow.

Poems for my granddaughter are up: https://pennkemp.wordpress.com/2023/12/13/for-ula-two-poems/.

Love and ease for 2024,
Penn

Painting, The Cosmic Egg (a Cardinal’s egg) by Jim Kemp

Rest and the rest is eas(ier) is my motto…

from THE WINTER WIDOW

Solace for the Newly Bereaved

What holds Sorrow and Joy in its lap?
‘Setsunai’ implies what has faded from
brightness, what can’t quite be recalled,
beyond knowing that everything passes.
Snow dropping on snow-spangled trees.

We share this deep new reality for
which no words suffice…maybe one
in Japanese, expressing the loss of
ten thousand things. Something quiet
in the snow, snow, the silencing snow.

 https://createforhealing.com/create-for-healing-magazine-the-art-of-overcoming/

The Winter Widow (i)

Sometimes I hear you speaking.
More often you nod approval or
shake your head to comment in
replay, in dream, in small glimpses.

You hover about at back of mind, at
nape of neck, those startled rising hairs.

The Winter Widow (ii)

The trick is knowing not to choose but to listen.
The choice is made, already. You are wafting
between up and down, between dimensions I
don’t as yet know. The indeterminate unknown
prompts me to poetry, to remember you there.

Stones Beneath the Surface, https://blackmallardpoetry.wixsite.com/home/books. https://blackmallardpoetry.wixsite.com/home/post/stones-beneath-the-surface-is-now-available-to-order

for Gavin Stairs, Beloved