Poems from the bottom of my anxious heart

Monday, March 12, 2012

Forever Doesn't Scare Me Anymore

How do you like eternity, mother?

Is it like we talked about, hoped it’d be?

Or did you flee this forsaken rock

To vanish

With countless blazing galaxies

Into oblivion?

You who were so brave, so lavish

Are now, what?

A nameless bit of dust

Meandering

Through the cosmic tomb?

A newborn sun

Scattering light

Across the dark, soundless chasm?

Do my prayers have any power?

If so, you’re heaven’s seraph,

Secure in everlasting fellowship.

I’m listening for an answer.

But only utter stillness

Stands between us, as if forever.

And yet, forever dosn’t

Scare me anymore,

Now that you’re there.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Want to Put Your Head in My Bucket?

Want to put your head in my bucket, Oma?

Nope.

Because you're old?

Yup.

Will you always be old?

Yup.

Do you want to be old?

Nope.

Then put your head in my bucket!

Friday, March 9, 2012

Not only Human, Not Only Earth (Published Spring 2013, www.hippocketpress.org/canary

This giant redwood tree we stumbled on

is old, so old it was a sapling when

Rome fell and Aztec still was spoken

in these woods

where we stood, my friend

and I, staring skyward,

she in quiet prayer and I musing

whether life's sundry forms

prove it must be sprouting out there

in countless starry gulches

of the Milky Way and far beyond

in ways an earthly brain can’t fathom.

We know Earth shimmers with a beauty

that’s finely tuned to human sensibility,

but not only human, and surely

not only Earth

The Connor Boy

He wasn't four long

before this bench

overlooking the lake

was dedicated in

loving memory

with a copper plaque

that won't last either.

We have to let go of everything.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

What she hears, she just hears.

What she smells, she just smells.

Knowing only this moment,

only simple things --

pain but not evil,

joy but not conceit.

Being without effort.

In one world at a time.

In this world, not a past,

not a future,

not another,

not the next.

Copyright (c) 2012 Ellen McCarthy. All rights reserved.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Funeral Hymn

Don’t sing to yourselves, my loves,

turn your eyes, your lips

to me, to my sleeping ears,

to my still growing hair.

Sing to me in my grave,

where I still dream,
still work my needles,
knitting our shadows
together.

So sing loud,
sing often, my loves.

Wake me
from this long sleep

if only in your hearts.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Staying Together

Before Great-Grandma Ampie died, and lay in hospice care, my grandson and I had conversations about death, such as this one.