WINTER GRIEF
Let the rest 
in this rested place 
rest for you.
Let the birds sing 
and the geese call
and the sky race
from west to east 
when you cannot raise 
a wing to fly.
Let evening
trace your loss 
in the stonework
against a fading sky.
So that 
you can give up
and give in
and be given back to,
so that you can let
winter
come and live
fully inside you,
so that
you can
retrace
the loving path
of heartbreak 
that brought you here. 
So you can cry alone
and be alone
so you can let 
yourself alone
to be lost,
so you can
let the one 
you have lost
alone, so that
you can let
the one 
you have lost 
have their 
own life 
and even
their own 
death
without you.
So the world
and everyone 
who has ever lived 
and ever died
can come and go 
as they please.
So you can
let yourself 
not know, what 
not knowing 
means.
So that
you can be
even more generous 
in your letting go
than they 
were 
in their leaving.
So that you can
let winter 
be winter.
So that you can let 
the world alone
to think of spring.
…
WINTER GRIEF
From
THE BELL AND THE BLACKBIRD
Poetry by David Whyte
APRIL 2018 © David Whyte and Many Rivers Press 
...
The grief of losing a loved one, the need to walk, to remember, to heal when you cannot heal, to remember what you do not wish to remember. The unconscious call for invisible help, and the not knowing consciously, how, in any way, to ask for it, the way everything refuses to console until we are ready for that consolation. The way winter turns to spring. DW

WINTER GRIEF ~ David Whyte / Music, Robert Linton / spoken by, M. Justice

THE WOMAN WHO WAS MUSIC 

The Woman Who Was Music boarded the train with the other beggars
and began to sing
hauntingly
of death
and of wonder
and of blood’s crimson quake

She stood fierce like an epic
Both startling and deviant
Like a witch or a goddess
Lashing madly at the moon

Within moments of her song’s commence the passengers on the train flowed in and through the woman without resistance
(without a map)
thrilled to be ensnared by her enchantment
The battles inside their heads relaxed
And relief settled comfortably in the pungent sultry air
Clouds of warm breath soothed a sea of jagged faces
And the inside of everyone’s mouth became moist and pink as though it had never known a desert 

The metal on the train,
(its walls and its railings)
began humming like a tuning fork
as if an ancient spell was making its way back into the collective consciousness
stanza by stanza
note by note 
(Bubble, bubble
Toil and trouble)  
And mythic snakes uncoiled from rigid groins to begin sliding and swaying like Salome before the beheading

The Woman Who Was Music transformed their heartbeats into longing
And their dreams into mutinies
And their limits into wings
She awoke them from their apathy
She propelled them to the light

and then she left 

abandoning them cruelly to an intolerable silence

In their mercy they threw at her the sweetest of their breads
In their guilt they hurled the stones

(mish 2019) ...artwork by mish...

THE WOMAN WHO WAS MUSIC (Max Richter)

Solace in lipstick and men

I will not die an unlived life. 
I will not live in fear 
of falling or catching fire. 
I choose to inhabit my days, 
to allow my living to open me, 
to make me less afraid, 
more accessible; 
to loosen my heart 
until it becomes a wing, 
a torch, a promise. 
I choose to risk my significance, 
to live so that which came to me as seed 
goes to the next as blossom, 
and that which came to me as blossom, 
goes on as fruit. 
Dawna Markova.

Fully Alive: By Dawna Markova, music Christian Lindquist, Narrator M.J. Hummingway

poem by, Jennifer Egan:

Let your heart break.
 Let it break wide open. 
You have lost all interest in 
trying to keep all the pieces 
together anymore.
 Your soul wants out. 
Your soul wants freedom.

You have been longing to 
stop pushing down the 
lump in your throat.
Let your truth be spoken. 
Let it be breathed.
 Let it flow through your body
 as dance, tears or sweat
without reason, analysis or
 control.

Let your heart beak.
 Let it break wide open.
 Let it sift out what no longer 
serves you.
 Let it pull the veils off.
 Finally.

What is here is clarity.
 Truth. Integrity.
 Raw and messy.
 But real.
￼

Let YourHeart Break, by Jennifer Egan, music Kara Johnstad, voice M. Justice

The cold and the warm, the ice and the fire, the life and the death, the blood and the water...you...

What About You - Original Composition

The Day
BY PETER EVERWINE
We walked at the edge of the sea, the dog,
still young then, running ahead of us.
 
Few people.  Gulls.  A flock of pelicans
circled beyond the swells, then closed
their wings and dropped head-long
into the dazzle of light and sea.  You clapped
your hands; the day grew brilliant.
 
Later we sat at a small table
with wine and food that tasted of the sea.
 
A perfect day, we said to one another,
so that even when the day ended
and the lights of houses among the hills
came on like a scattering of embers,
we watched it leave without regret.
 
That night, easing myself toward sleep,
I thought how blindly we stumble ahead
with such hope, a light flares briefly—Ah, Happiness!
then we turn and go on our way again.
 
But happiness, too, goes on its way,
and years from where we were, I lie awake
in the dark and suddenly it returns—
that day by the sea, that happiness,
 
though it is not the same happiness,
not the same darkness.

Poem copyright ©2016 by Peter Everwine, “The Day,” from New Letters, (Vol 83, no. 1, 2016-17). Poem reprinted by permission of Peter Everwine and the publisher.

The Day By Peter Everwine, narrator M.J. Hummingay

Ada, by Dave Davis, music Fabrizio Pigliucci, narrator M.Justice

Read the full poem at: https://andrewlafleche.com/f/at-night

At night

THE WELL (music Nu Meditation Music)

A CURIOUS MIXTURE OF ELEMENTS
poem by mish 2020

A CURIOUS MIXTURE OF ELEMENTS (music: Hauser adagio for strings)

My name is Mish Kanafani مش كنفاني. I am an author and visual artist. I love what I do. Check out my Facebook page: Mishmosh Poetry and Art for the poetry's written word. Also Instagram Mishmosh poetry and art...

THE WOMAN WHO WAS MUSIC (Max Richter)

Mishmosh Poetry and Art

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