"Outsoaring The Shadow Of Night" By Tanya Linnegar
"Outsoaring The Shadow Of Night" By Tanya Linnegar
I have little tolerance
for the constant rain here...
Yet, in each drop I feel your presence.
More apt, it seems,
than the flowers pushing up everywhere lately,
than sunshine.
At that time each morning,
wrenched from our sleep...
expectantly we await your return.
You lost your way often
on long cycling trips...
But always found your way back to us,
This time, lost
in the ambulance
On the way to the hospital...
Now we find you in letters, photographs
flies, bees, butterflies and ghosts here...
I write these messages
And watch them float up
up,
up,
and away...
What matters is the release...
What I feel is the loss...
A breeze brushes cherry blossoms,
and the city hums...
Snow capped mountains kissed by light,
glimmer in the distance.
I search for you in changing shadows
on buildings, on streets
Close by the buzz of an insect,
a flutter of wings.
I think this is how I shall remember you...
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From "The Prophet" By Kahlil Gibran:
On the subject of Death, The prophet says:
You would know the secret of death
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day
cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death,
open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one
even as the river and the sea are one.
In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the
king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling,
that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides,
that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance."
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"Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas:
"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
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An excerpt from "Adonais" by Percy Bysshe Shelley:
"Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep-
He hath awakened from the dream of life-
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings.-We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain;
Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.
He lives, he wakes 'tis Death is dead, not he..."