Roses growing and dying in my Garden
It Will End, I’m Sad to Say
By Jane Tawel
September 19, 2023
*
And then it will end.
And all will be as never before,
and never again,
and never ever more.
But whether I shall enter something new,
through a small crack in the ether,
or a wide-open door,
my current view is that all things old,
will pass away.
And that makes me sad today.
Yes, it will end, I’m sad to say.
*
Hasn’t anyone ever told you?
It’s okay to be sad.
Grief is the gift we fear most to open,
but once unwrapped,
and held tight in shaking hands,
and viewed deeply with eyes continually filling
with the tears of unshed fears or hopeless hopes;
well, then, grief can become a friend
that helps us fill the moments with music,
the music of our real lives,
that the tick-tock-tick of the clocks
try to drown out.
*
If life is a symphony,
and grief is a dirge,
then only the urge
of our deepest desires,
can transform life and love
into what may inspire
Eternal cognition of a unified whole;
but until then we just have to trust,
in what may be the Soul.
*
Oh, isn’t the world wonderful?
*
Today I saw a poor little squirrel,
whose life was ended by the rush
of someone trying to get to work on time,
someone whose mind was probably focused blindly
on things not present, as mine often is,
whose eyes weren’t seeing what was right in front of her,
and missed the opportunity to save a life.
I murmured as I swerved
around the poor little broken, bloody body.
That squirrel was someone’s child or parent,
or friend. It played once in the tree in my front yard.
It hurt me to see it now dead and alone,
as it pains me deeply to think of all that is emptied out,
all that is alone, all that dies.
*
Life is pain,
and therein is truth to The Way.
Life is precious and oh, so glorious,
and therein is hope for the day.
*
And I saw a rose in my garden,
once red, now browned and petal-less,
and it hurt me to snip it
but I did it, even though it pierced my silly soul to do so,
like a thorn piercing my heart.
I snipped off the dead rose-hip,
in order that some other small flower could have the space to grow.
Everything has to die.
But all must choose to grow.
*
And I wonder, how much of my life,
I have squashed and killed,
or just not taken the time for,
or not let grow,
in my rush to think of something
other than what I was doing?
And I wonder, what might grow from me,
when I am snipped off from Life’s vine?
*
Oh, to live eternally
seems a goal not over-reaching.
And yet, our arms are far too short,
and our faith too short-sighted
to reach the end in sight;
to reach the end in Light.
*
Like a misplaced period.
We stop before the sentence end…
We keep restarting before the story begins…
We are not meant to live desiring eternity
but to live in the passions of this present moment.
Seeking Presence, not presents,
we can gift ourselves
with the continual opening up of
Joy in the journey,
knowing this journey’s end will come,
but not what journey may lie ahead,
with each next step of unearned grace,
around the bend of surrendering to blessing.
*
I grieve for the me that one day
(perhaps even today)
will no longer be the me I think I know.
And every once in a while,
in the embrace of my grief,
I feel the freedom to rejoice,
in what none of us can ever know,
but I can dimly sense,
that someday I might be.
*
And so, in moments today,
stolen from Time’s rushing River,
I make my fears and hopes inert.
As in a dead-man’s float,
I let myself be carried.
I trust in the Unknown Unknowable,
and though I still fight against, fight within, fight on,
I try to let the River take me;
take me just as far as the next wave or eddy,
just as far as a small stone’s throw.
*
It takes a bit of practice to let things die.
*
Creator of New Things,
Please snip off the dead things in me,
so that something new may grow.
And whether I shall ever know,
what lives beyond my grave,
I hope that someday I shall feel
the motion of my small, own wave,
lapping against a bright, new shore,
Alive! as never before,
and reborn, in the Ocean of Your Love.
*
© Jane Tawel, 2023
Jane Tawel 