[Dialogue] Maya Angelou Poetry - another try

[Joyce Sloan]

Love this!!

On Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 9:44 PM Nancy Trask via Dialogue <
dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

> When Great Trees Fall
> by
> Maya Angelou
>
> When great trees fall,
> rocks on distant hills shudder,
> lions hunker down in tall grasses,
> and even elephants lumber after safety.
> When great trees fall in forests,
> small things recoil into silence,
> their senses eroded beyond fear.
>
> When great souls die,
> the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile.
> We breathe, briefly.
> Our eyes, briefly,
> see with a hurtful clarity.
> Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
> examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid,
> promised walks, never taken.
>
> Great souls die, and our reality,
> bound to them, takes leave of us.
> Our souls, dependent upon their nurture,
> now shrink, wizened.
> Our minds,
> formed and informed by their radiance,
> fall away.
> We are not so much maddened
> as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
> of dark, cold caves.
>
> And when great souls die,
> after a period peace blooms,
> slowly and always irregularly.
> Spaces fill with a kind of
> soothing electric vibration.
> Our senses, restored, never
> to be the same, whisper to us.
> "They existed.  They existed.
> We can be.  Be and be
> better.  For they existed."
>
>
> Sorry for the earlier version -- very hard on the eyes!
> Nancy Trask
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