#sadness
DREAM ANOTHER DREAM
Her life was not an easy one…it was filled with misfortune…heartache…and pain…but every time she’d fall…she’d pick herself up again.
She’d brush herself off…take a deep breath…then stand tall…all the while her optimism never wavered…and she never lost her smile.
I asked her one day, “How do you do it? How do you keep from feeling low? Is there a secret to your happiness…if so…I’d like to know.”
“The answer for me is simple.” She said. “Nothing too extreme…the key to my happiness has always been…my ability to dream.”
“When life hands me a disappointment…when I lose my self-esteem…when one dream fails…or has been broken…I dream another dream.”
“And when a dream has ended…good or bad…I take a moment to rejoice…or cry…then I remind myself there are as many dreams…as there are stars up in the sky.”
“Then I choose another star to dream on…and if that dream leads to scars…I look up to the heavens…and I choose another star.”
“I dream another dream.” She said. “And if another day I’m lucky enough to make it through…I stop and take a moment to count how many dreams I’ve made came true.”
Her life ended as all ours will and though I still think it unfair…remembering her words I chose not to live in my despair.
Instead I dream of the moment we will meet again…Hey! It is easier than it seems…to follow her advice…to dream another dream.
DREAM ALONE
They were good friends when they were young…they’d lie together under the stars…he’d search for constellations…she loved Jupiter and Mars.
The two of them were so young all they had to do it seemed…was to laugh and play and sit together under the stars…and dream.
And oh the dreams they dreamed…of things they’d do and the places they would go…never realizing at such an innocent age…there was much they did not know.
They didn’t know on those evenings looking up at the stars from her backyard that life would not always be that easy…or would hit her quite so hard.
As she grew up her life became one of sadness, of sorrow, of uncertainty and doubt.
He saw her sinking into a quicksand of depression…but he could not pull her out.
She left him a note the day she killed herself with instructions to read it…under either Jupiter or Mars…It read: I’m sorry to be leaving you but there’s just too much darkness between the stars.
He rereads her note often…on nights sitting under a starlit sky
and even after all these years…he still can’t help but wonder why…
Why he couldn’t help her find a way through her sadness…over the terror of her starkness…a way to help her see the stars…instead of all the darkness.
As he looks up at the stars today he tells her, “I’m still missing you…and I am sad for all the dreams we made that never will come true.”
“And I have to tell you something when we were young we couldn’t possibly have known…
It’s not as much fun dreaming…when you have to dream alone.”
HOLIDAY SADNESS
For many of us the holidays are happy times…it’s when we smile, we laugh…we grin but for many others the holidays is when sorrow comes flooding in.
When the waters of sadness rise around them…as they are reminded of a death, they wonder how long they’ll be underwater…how long they’ll have to hold their breath.
And though they know the flood will on day end and their life will resume unimpeded…they wonder how they’ll repair the damage once the waters have receded.
How will they rebuild each time they’re reminded of their pain…if they’re lucky they start to notice little things…like the sky after a rain.
Like how the sunlight paints the morning sky as it welcomes in the day.
Like the laughter of their family…and friends they’ve met along the way.
There is no time limit on sadness…and it may take a while…but eventually they begin to remember all the things that made them smile.
And the more they remind themselves of the pleasures in their life…the less they think about the pain…
a skill they will find useful…when the waters rise again.
SOMEONE TO HOLD ON TO
Things will not always go our way
We know this fact to be true…
so may we be blessed when bad things happen
we have someone to hold on to.
GOODBYE ROSE
Cancer is an ugly disease…not only for the life it takes
But for all the sorrow and sadness…left floating in its wake….
Although I did not know her personally I’ve kept abreast of cases she has tried
which is why I was saddened yesterday when I heard that she had died.
But what finally caused my tears to flow…what opened my floodgate
was, amidst the many tributes to her, were the messages of hate.
The more I read the sadder I felt until soon I was feeling numb
as my heart filled up with sorrow at the country we’ve become.
Cancer comes in many forms causing families sadness, sorrow and strife
progressing slowly through the body until it finally takes a life.
Hate is a form of cancer…I wish people would understand
How it’s metastasizing quickly…as it spreads across the land.
Two forms of cancer make me sad today…
The first that took this woman I am thinking of…
and the second that is slowly killing
this country that I love.
OUR FOUNDATIONS
There was a time when we were children
when we loved everyone…indiscriminately…
when we were pouring the foundation
of who we, one day, hoped to be.
Mixed into the foundation
of who we hoped to be
were the beginnings of a dream
of the world we hoped to see.
When our foundation was completed…when it dried
there we hoped to find
a house built on acceptance
on being loving, compassionate and kind.
But when we looked around us
at the diversity of our world…and of our nation
we found every house was not built
upon the same foundation.
And we came to understand and appreciate
what many before us have known:
How every house, no matter the foundation
has a beauty all its own.
And so our dream amidst such diverse foundations
is that everyone will come to find
a world that is accepting
that is loving, compassionate and kind.
Which is why, as adults, we are so sad today…
when we see so much hate
when we kill each other so indiscriminately…
and we wonder when did our world turned into
the world we never dreamed that it would be.
THAT SOMEONE
When searching for the key to happiness
It’s difficult to know exactly what to do
Sometimes I wonder if we should be looking
into our sadness too…
We should look for someone who knows our sadness
who can see the tear before it reaches our eye
for someone who accepts our sadness
who knows it’s okay to cry.
For someone who understand us
who can read our changing mood…or tone
who knows when we want to be held
and when we want to be left alone.
For someone who understands sadness has its own schedule
who knows what is at stake
someone who will sit beside us…and hold our hand
no matter how long we take.
For someone who knows when it comes to sadness
this lesson they have learned:
It is only through patience and love and understanding
that happiness will return.
And if you’re lucky you will find your happiness…
You’ll find that someone who
all the while you were looking for them
they were looking for you.
GET OVER IT!
These poems I write I write for me…I like to take the time
to put my feelings down on paper and to make my stories rhyme…
It’s kind of like a daily diary…it’s something I love do do
and when I’m finished I like to share the words I write…with you.
What I write are my feelings, my views…I write about the world I see
and I don’t desire nor do I expect every one to agree with me…
And when you don’t agree I’m usually fine with that…
but yesterday I have to note
I was a little saddened by one response…by what one person wrote.
I posted a poem about how George Floyd will never get the chance to teach his daughter how to fly…
lamenting how he cried out…
how it was a tragic and senseless way to die.
That same day I received this note…which saddened me I must admit
The note said, ‘He’s not the first and only person to die!
and ended with, ‘Get over it!”
Get over it…get over it…these words reverberate inside my head
Get over it…get over it…is what whoever wrote this said.
Get over how a person…any person had to die this way
Get over how another person’s life was so callously taken away.
Get over the tragedy the inequity….the inhumanity?
I confess it is always going to be a challenge getting over it…for me…
So the question I must ask the person who said, ‘Get Over it’
be you a woman…or a man
Is the problem how difficult it is for me to get over it…
or how easily you can?
'He’s not the first and only person to die! Get over it.’
LIKE A CASTLE IN THE SAND
When our heart is filled with sorrow we find it hard to comprehend
why this happened in our life…why to our family or friends?
Yet it’s preposterous to think in a world where every living thing must die
that sorrow will overlook us...will somehow pass us by.
Just as joy has the capacity to surprise….sorrow has the capacity to shock.
The pendulum of life swings back and forth...at any hour of the clock.
In those inevitable moments when sorrow descends upon our land
It helps for me to envision it…like a castle in the sand.
At the onset a castle built of sadness stands tall...seizing our full attention.
Our life has slowed and is now crowded with misery, fear and tension.
Our face which one time was awash in smile is now in constant frown
but soon our tears, like the ocean’s waves, begin to tear that castle down.
It happens ever so slowly leaving us to wonder if we can go on
until one day we awake to find that castle is now gone.
We find we can be happy again, and though we’ll never be the same
our sorrow has dissolved back into the sands from which it came.
Certainly sorrow has done her damage, causing torment, causing pain
and in her wake upon our heart a lasting scar remains.
But that scar not only reminds us of the sorrow we’ve been through
It also shows, no matter what the pain, that we can heal too.
It shows we can survive...it shows we can withstand
It shows even our deepest sorrow will eventually dissolve…
like a castle in the sand.