This past week, I dug up all my old journals from boxes and drawers to photograph for my grief e-course I am building. In the course, we will spend a week writing about our grief, and so I decided to go back through my own journals to look for examples of some of the raw emotions I have captured since this journey began.
One of the things we talk about in the course is writing poetry. I have found poems able to express my feelings in concise, creative ways that are very different from journaling. This poem in particular, feels both hopeful and hopeless at the same time… such a mix of the true emotions I have felt since he died. Each time I return back to this poem, I’m reminded of that time a year after his death when I wrote it. I’m reminded of how nature can serve as a powerful metaphor for our struggles, and how poetry can give us a different kind of voice for our grief. Enjoy…
The Winds of You
To say that you have died does not begin to put it into words…
All that was solid is now air…
My ground to stand on,
My seas to sail,
My trees to climb…
All of it is air.
I can still breathe you in,
But I cannot see the ocean of your eyes
Or feel the earth of your skin
And I cannot wrap my arms around your limbs.
The landscape of me is left only with the winds of you…
Still you shape me, but it is never enough.
Photo Credit: Frantisek Spurny
