Lamentation

Today Robin Williams, took his life. Last month, a young woman well loved by many left behind a loving partner and daughter, her pain too great to bear. Last year the husband of my dearest friend took his life after a long chronic condition left him with intractable pain and vomiting. I wrote this piece with the intention of setting it to music. However, I feel moved to post it here. It speaks to pain and grief of those who suffer and of those who would do anything to lift their pain from the hearts. In my life, the love of my life was caught in the trance that would have ended in suicide had she not told me her intention. It is only Grace that she is here with me today, to stand together by the waterfall.

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Sometimes you feel  like a motherless child.

So alone,  so all alone.  Wound in your soul, a black hole.

black magic, its tragic, a dark spell is cast, holding you fast.

Feeling you slide into the dark night of the soul

I stay by your side, day after day,

Your pain weighs on me like a lode stone.

All my love can’t heal your pain

Your sorrow has become my shame

My hand can’t hold your sorrow.

Your sorrow has become my shame

Your pain weighs on me like a lode stone

Here’s what I need to tell you;

I cannot take your chalice, from you.

my joy can’t fill your cup

I pray that you can give it up,

Let the wind touch your face, feel the grass where you stand

For I can never hold your sorrow in my hand

Look to the mountain high and strong; look to the valley green

And pray for the day when we will lie down by a quiet stream

Pour your pain into the river, float on the river down to the sea,

Bless you child, let the cool of the river wash your pain away,

Rolling rolling down stream to the sea.

Sweeping  the pain away,  Feeling  your pain slipping away.

Let the wind touch your face, feel the grass where you stand

For I could never hold your sorrow in my hand

Look to the river cool and clear look to the aspen tall

I Pray for the day when we will stand tall by the waterfall.

One minute of your joy will fill me up, Pour your joy into my cup,

I want to hear you laugh again,

Sing your songs of hope again, just for a few minutes each day.  

Eileen M. Jackson
8/11/2014

Compassion

Compassion

If I catch you

it is only for the moment.

This moment

only this one now,

where we are now,

and here.

If I catch you in the moment

I may find you by the blackened sea

 where there is so much room for light.

Sometimes I can shine a beam

into the blackness,

 in the moment

this moment,

only this one.

These moments are treasures,

 blue and green agates on the shores of my days.

Days when I can bring your smile up,

and out into the sun shine.

These treasures stack up

one on the next.

A sand castle on my beach.

Then,

Sometimes you catch me,

in momentum of your momentous moment.

You catch me.

Terrified, holding on for dear life

to the shore,

grasping at stones and shells,

the pieces of my life,

my memories of the past

what I was and what I was not.

Remenants of a life

far from here,

far from now.

Remenants from a life I know.

I listen

to the crashing waves

of your words

on the shores of this moment.

I listen.

As the tide rips me away.

It is here that I miss the mark.

The stones I send,

words really,

skip and bounce off the surface

of your sea change.

You call out,

I lock into your pain with my own.

 Grief sits like an ice castle.

In my solar plexus.

There is only heart freeze,

like brain freeze white and hot.

I write to melt the ice.

These close encounters

bring me to a place of deep knowing

 passing through immeasurable hurt and grief.

It hurts to hurt someone

you love this much.

So, at the edge of the tide I sit.

Quiet,

melting in the sun.

The pulsing blood in my temples

the heart of the universe

beating inside my body,

tells me

this is no ordinary journey.

The sea’s foamy fingers

play with

the stones and shells,

fingering melodies

ebbing flowing

over the souls of my feat.

Still

so still.

Breath flows

into my silent spaces.

Storms pass.

Calm returns me

to where there is so much room

for light in this moment,

here. now.