Tag Archives: sorrow

Who Are You?

May 10, 2017Uncategorizedbeing seen, being wild, being yourself, change, compassion, empowerment, fire of the forge, grief, growing, healing, humility, light, living, naming, owning your strength, poetry, shadow, shame, sorrow, the fianna, transformation, transparency, trust, wholeness, wild onesÉilis Niamh

Hold nothing back, you have no need to hide
Hold out your hands, you have no need to defend
Let go and live wild, you have no need to doubt
Let go and breathe, you have no need to fear

Stand equal to the defenders of dreams, protectors of truth, guardians of growing
Stand strong among the streaming stars that set your soul alight with wonder
And even when all you feel inside are division and despair
Show me the light of you, for this is who you are

Kindle the kindness that shame forbids you to share
With the one whose worth it tries to mar
Yes, that one, daring to dance despite history’s horrors
Blazing the beauty of you, every moment

Show me how you are learning to trust
With the gentle grace grown in the soil of sorrow
Show me how you are finding self-compassion
While fighting fiercely to own your own strength

Show me the spark that shines through the dark at the heart of you
Beneath the beliefs that still barricade you from belonging
Tell me of the tenderness you touch after trembling
And the tears that turned terror to triumph

Stand in the fire that melts chains and burns burdens
False foundations fall, timber tumbles, so many ruins crumbling
Flames fill and surround you, radiance reshaping shadow
Show me the sunlight soaring in your eyes

The Gifts of Grieving

June 7, 2016Uncategorizedacceptance, acknowledging grief, being present with sadness, emotion, feeling, forgetting, healing, history, honesty, loss, memory, sorrow, truth, waterÉilis Niamh

At the center of each of us
A deep pool glistens
A well of tears
Fed from rivers of remembering

Here, exhausted hearts stop to rest
To spill the growing grief of moonless tides
Gently, waves wash gnarled bent hands
And the gaunt faces of mothers with stillborn dreams

Sorrow of sisters who could not tell their stories
Weary weeping borne with the nameless burdens
No time to reflect, slow down and ask questions
No time to repair all that’s worn through and ragged

Sunlight slowly smooths the surface
And the fog of forgetting retreats
Peaceful honesty, soft touch of gold hues
Soothes the swirling swells to calm

And from the vivid depths of human losses
I witness myriads of mirrored faces
See myself reflected in them all
As have millions of eyes before mine

Eyes that have watched deserts
Being formed from women and children
Singed with the screaming
Sparks of raw hatred

Eyes that closed yearning
For the warm welcome of family
In between long hours
The endless hunger of the red-splashed anger

We cannot evaporate the charred scars of our choices
Some tracks of tears weren’t meant to be dried
Healing hides in this quiet reservoir of keening
I will tend it tenderly with salty rain

Sojourner’s Song

August 13, 2015Uncategorizedhealing, home, peace, restoration, solace, sorrow, traveling, wandererÉilis Niamh

At the center of solace
The songpath ceases

Climb down the spiral
Slopes surrounding

Snake like rivers
Bright with sorrows

Sparkling inlets
Refuge for sadness

The house being restored
Beyond the bend

Ask at the hearth fire
The seeds of joy

Held in their hands
Be at peace

There, a thousand cries are heard
To hush

Weary traveler
Come home from wandering

Go rest yourself there
I’ll point the way

There is always enough
Room for one more

Falling Stars

July 12, 2015Uncategorizedancestors, beginning to heal, death, generations, grief, light, long ago, lost, memory, recognition, senseless violence, sorrow, space for reflection, stars, survival, time, watchingÉilis Niamh

Stars fall
And fall
I could do nothing
But watch stars fall

Brilliant sparks of soaring light
Lost in a senseless sea of sorrow
Tears cried too late
Then too soon dried

There was no time
To gather the fractured shards of love
Hold them close
Keen their crossing

Run, the shadows
Will snuff out in an inky smoke
The tiny incandescent suns
Smoldering in your harried, haunted eyes

Does the earth over your heads lie cold
Is it not yet satiated
With enough red rain
No time, I slip

Over the black pools
Lying in wait
Like withered, sunken eyes
Acrid reservoirs of unwept tears

Don’t fall…
But silently, filling
Hollows with the horrors of memory
A steady rain

Perhaps tomorrow
The warm sunshine
And the call of the curlew
Will pull me back

From the endless depths
Of yesterday’s neglected grief
But at last, today I weep
And weep for fallen stars

Forging Something New

February 2, 2015Uncategorizedbending spoons, challenges, change, crying, despair, discouraged, doubt, earth, environmental destruction, exhaustion, fear, feeling safe, floating, grief, grounding, harsh reality, having enough, healing, hope, letting go, light, longing, loss of species, love, moving on, needs, over my head, project, rocks, shadow, sorrow, suffering, time, transformation, transition, treading water, truth, try, vulnerability, wearinessÉilis Niamh

Hoping that struggle will solve every problem,
Treading water for days,
I give in, realizing I’ve not gone anywhere,
But am rather swamped by other people’s feelings.

What am I missing?
staying strong, striving for more,
Too much to be done now
To wait for a quieter kind of transformation.

I don’t want to use the word despair,
It serves no one,
But I am a single person
In a needy sea of change.

Tidal waves crash, over my head,
And it gets hard to breathe.
No place to land, I try floating,
Only to look up at a sky, clouded.

Yesterday we asked for healing.
We saw the red tears fall,
We hoped thread-bare, without ceasing,
Grounding ourselves on the standing stones.

Today I feel so terribly alone,
Finishing a project that cannot restore
The fracked landscape, felled trees,
Sorrow in the lives of my many friends.

It is not enough to ease my exhaustion,
Or put an end to the haunted look in my eyes.
Do we have enough time?
Is there still time?

Yesterday I sprawled out on the rock
And closed my eyes,
A purple hood pulled up over my head,
Keeping out the cold. You said,

Would you ever be willing to bend like a spoon
Reshaped to reflect all your brilliant light?
I’d hold you safe within my hands
Until you became definite, solid again.

I admit, I find this a wholly disagreeable idea,
So I’ve answered you so far with the sound of silence.
What am I missing? Holding still for a moment,
This fragmented world spinning out of control, I am at a loss.

But, too discouraged to do anything else,
I let go, with no clue as to what’s going on.
Cave early, I’ve heard. I agree out of weariness, not curiosity,
The hapless child stumbling over myself to get out of the way.

What’s going to happen now?
The oceans are heaving in grief,
The world cries out in human and nonhuman voices,
Longing, pleading, to end this needless suffering.

And so far I have only fought battles with my shadow,
Tried healing my own raw woundedness.
What is the shape of fear, turned to love?
Such a strange alchemy, when truth meets with acceptance.

I hope for the best,
I come face to face with my own ignorance,
I take one step and then the next,
All right, then, if it means you’ll carry me through the rest.

First World Living

October 23, 2014Uncategorizedabundance, dissertation, emptiness, enough, exhaustion, fighting, first world living, giving up, home, hunger, inequality, lost, making sense, meaninglessness, overwhelmed, purpose, questions, sorrow, unjust distribution, wantingÉilis Niamh

I am giving up, I say
Crawling into bed
Closing my eyes
Many relationships, my dissertation

Are simply not working
I am tired of fighting, I say
Nothing happens
Events feel senseless to me

In high school once a year
We drew tiles
White blue red
First, second, third world

Meals were dealt out accordingly
Everything from banquets to hardly anything
More went home empty and hungry
Some went home full wanting more

Later I walk across the street
To the restaurant
There I am hungry
Potatoes and vegetables, soup and turkey

carry it home
I sit down with my thanks
Giving proportions
Fill a glass

With water
Prepare to eat and realize
This is first world living

Not just the food but
Having more than enough and still
Feeling like
Life is a waste

All day emptiness but outside
The world spills up and over itself everywhere
Full of itself with
More than enough

The Beauty In All Things

September 4, 2014Uncategorizedbeauty, change, children, coming to terms, darkness, death, despair, differences, generations, growing, honesty, hope, human condition, joy, learning, life, life cycles, memories, sadness, shades of grey, shelter, shining, song, sorrow, standing tall, surviving, this world, tides, time, transformation, truth, uncertainty, violence, vulnerability, what is remembered lives, wonderÉilis Niamh

I look all around this world
For the beauty in all things:
It’s in your eyes,
It’s in the starlight in your hair,

It’s in the cries of children,
The murmurings of all that grows.
Sometimes it just breaks me to see so much anger, so much fear,
And the tears we cry over what people’s hands and minds have done.

Flowers do not know despair,
Sitting there so patiently
They never mind the waiting.
I am looking far away, struck by memories almost fading–

For what is left behind when we die, but how we’ll be remembered?
None of the trees, none of the seas, none of the green stands still,
Until pieces of the scars start to be beautiful, make sense,
Bright and radiant, even holding truth at our expense.

How change so suddenly engulfs us,
Forcing us to recognize dishonesty.
How change so suddenly enfolds us,
Transforming all we thought we’d be.

In time I know wounds will heal, mountains fading into sea,
Time smooths over what is real, while conquerors write its history.
In time the children crawl, then stand, to walk life’s mystery,
And I hope this time that I can find the beauty in all things.

Rarely is existence black and white,
As in betweens we have a power of our own:
To magnify the bruises,
Etch the outlines of scars,

Glint in the rain drops,
Shimmer with the echos through the sky,
And bless the dawn with light,
And draw out all the life in everyone.

Sometimes there is too much darkness,
And I don’t know what will become of us,
But as long as I am here, I’ll make sure I’m standing tall,
Taking in all, swaying when the wind blows.

I’ll survive somehow,
Our memories, our dreams they have survived,
Broken pieces of identity,
Often not invaluable enough to save,

Our needs not what they used to be,
In a way there is nothing more to need.
I am here, a testament to love,
What are tides, if we never had changed course sometimes.

It’s hard to say just how I feel,
Harder still to share the desperation in my eyes,
Hardest to admit when I’m afraid
To walk the world alone, unsure of what’s ahead.

What else can I say, you are shining, ,
You are changing the way I face the things of life.
Holding gently in my hands what time has left for me,
Songs of joy and sorrow, I wish to gather gratefully.

And I hope, despite what life might bring,
I’ll find shelter in some trees,
Look across the seas,
Hear the laughter of my children and with them, wonder at such beauty,
The beauty in all things.

One Night At a Berkeley Pub

August 10, 2014UncategorizedAilbhe, ancestors, ancient family, Berkeley, compassion, conflict, feeling others' feelings, hidden stories, loss, memories, more to learn, otherworld, poetry, pub, sharing space, silence, song, sorrow, spiritual experience, the fianna, the illusion of separateness, The Starry Plow, unexpected moments, World War IÉilis Niamh

At the Starry Plow, , a young man sings “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda”
It’s the first time I have really listened to the words:
Tales of the ravages of the first world war
Exhausted, I wistfully wish he’d picked a different song tonight.

But when the verses are over and the chorus repeats
Again and again, my attention starts shifting.
To the ten people standing in the isle
Standing in a line, silent as a grave.

I’m the only one to notice them,
Held transfixed by the grief that haunts their tearless eyes
And within such sadness, I lose my bearings,
Their solemn sorrow startles me.

This is not what I expected.
Too many emotions that contradict each other
Course through their bodies, as they let the music move them.
Too much to be present to, but I try.

And then forgetting to make sense out of it all,
I fold my hands and sit still with them until the song is over.
Together, they wrap their Arms around each other,
Holding on tightly, as if bracing themselves against emptiness.

As if, by trying to appear as one,
They could quell the different struggles taking place within them each,
A weary story etched upon their faces,
Between us and the silence, and with the silence it remains.

If I were alone I’d cry for those whose tears cannot fall.
My friend asks me, “Aren’t you going to drink your beer?”
But I am far, so far, far away from here.
Feeling what they’re feeling, I can’t move or speak at all.

The song done, I wish that I could comfort her, my troubled soul sister,
Beside me now, determined to regain composure,
And though I cannot hold her, I can reach out and enfold her,
Never alone, I whisper, a single space is ours together.

The Sound of What Happens

Poetry and philosophy from an aspiring contemporary bard.

Tag Archives: sorrow

Who Are You?

The Gifts of Grieving

Sojourner’s Song

Falling Stars

Forging Something New

First World Living

The Beauty In All Things

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