[Oe List ...] Poetry about death - and an amusing anecdote

[Nancy Trask]

First the amusing anecdote... from Karamo Brown of Queer Eye fame:

Karamo:  You need not worry about death, you should worry about what state
you’re in.
Jonathan Van Ness (in a horrified whisper):  New Jersey!

And the poetry:
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.”

― Maya Angelou
Grace and peace,

Nancy Trask
NLT462 at gmail.com
Nancy50273 at centurylink.net
515 505 0456
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