WHEN DYING IS ANNOUNCED

Dark clouds hover,
breezes shift,
sun’s rays ease 
while rabbit skitters
to protection.

In the unexpected,
tensions rise,
plans change,
we scurry when 
we thought we 
could rest, thinking
this day 
would last 
forever.

The announcement comes,
our brains slow, 
numb in thought:
to do, to think,
to plan, to support,
to be present, as
a loved one navigates,
through rocky terrain.

A child’s laughter
wakes us into now,
not when or if, but
the present, filled
with love and compassion,
and we realize
the sun never went anywhere,
was merely hidden 
behind a dark cloud that, true
to its nature, drifts.

Losses felt,
not in a moment but
in the movement of time,
and change, and then
through the laughter of children, 
we move, we live, we love.

“What we see, and like to see, is cure and change. But what we do not see and do not want to see is care, the participation in the pain, the solidarity in the suffering, the sharing in the experience of brokenness.”

HENRI NOWEN

“It is a serious thing to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world.”

Mary Oliver

“Always hold fast to the present. Every situation, indeed every moment, is of infinite value, for it is the representative of a whole eternity.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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