Day 9: remembrance
We Are Winter Poets
Friends,
We only have today and tomorrow to wrap up this wonderful, short season of poetry writing. I don’t want it to end, but it must, because we get to close it out with such gratitude and wait to gather here again around our words in 2024.
What a gift.
Today’s word evokes ideas of those who have come before, our human and non-human kin, those who have created and sustained the world we have today.
Our word is remembrance.
When Dani and her family (grab your copy of Winter’s Gifts here!) gather around their winter solstice table, they do so with a spirit of remembering—remembering their ancestors, remembering where their food comes from, remembering to hold gratitude for Mother Earth, Grandfather Sun, Grandmother Moon, remembering to hold close to one another.
So, sit with this idea of remembrance. Light a candle. Settle in with a warm blanket. Look out the window for a few minutes, or take a short walk. Let your heart gather in what it needs to before you write.
Remembrance
Sting once wrote a song of remembrance,
about a gathering place in a field of gold
and two people journeying together through life,
the sunrise and sunset of every single day
guiding them toward one another.
So I think about the path I’ve chosen,
the roads I took that I was told weren’t meant
for someone like me, and I remember.
I remember what it means to choose a life,
the grief and excitement embedded in that
very decision, a decision to come alive.
I remember each of those discussions,
quiet whispers of is this the right thing or
are we building the community we really need?
And every single time I close my eyes,
remembrance flooding my heart and mind,
and I whisper to myself yes, to this beautiful,extremely tender story we’ve written, and yes,
to this winding, unconventional road we travel.
I will always remember what got me here,
every field of gold, every song, every tear,
and one day I’ll lay down and cover my heart,
hoping that in the days after, someone else
will choose a new, sacred path and remember me.
This is an Instagram post I wrote in December 2022, to remember my Grandmother... As soon as I saw today's prompt I knew this is what I wanted to share.
Time
Today
would have been your 87th birthday. Yesterday
marked one year since we lost you.
This week last year,
I bought you a birthday card,
which was sealed and stamped the day you went into the hospital.
A week later I laid it on your casket.
Hours before
you went to the hospital,
we were making plans to see eachother
in just a few days.
Today,
I found a card in a store that says,
"You are loved,"
and it felt like a card from you.
Yesterday,
I curled up under the quilt
you made for our wedding
and I finished the row
where you left off in your needle point.
I'll finish the rest
someday,
but I'm not ready yet.
Today
I put on your necklace, and your earrings hoping to bring you closer,
but nothing
is as close as when you were here.
I don't know what to do with
your death day being yesterday,
but your birthday being today.
In some moments,
I'm okay,
and in others I'm still so lost.
As the minutes slide away
on your birthday,
I miss you more and more.
And that's today.
Missing you as much as ever,
soon
it will be
tomorrow
again,
and someday,
we'll be together again.
My wife and I go hiking a lot, and we get very sentimental about benches that are in memoriam of someone, often with a loving or beautiful inscription. So here is my poem for the day:
Inscriptions for Our Future Memorial Bench
for my wife
They loved this hillside.
Pause a while here.
Returned to the earth.
Gone home to the lakes and grass.
They loved this trail.
Thank you for everything.
They loved this view.
Go and be part of the world.
Beloved friends, aunts, siblings, artists.
Now is the moment.
See us in the rain and the stars.
This was all so much fun.