When Great Trees Fall

 

This was read at our poetry session yesterday and it struck a chord. "Great souls die and/our reality, bound to/ them, takes leave of us." There is a dialectic between what was and what is and these lines help me realize that this dialectic generates energy which shapes what will be. Our reality takes leave and then possibly returns 'wizened' to be...

When Great Trees Fall


    by Maya Angelou
When great trees fall,

rocks on distant hills shudder,

lions hunker down

in tall grasses,

and even elephants

lumber after safety.



When great trees fall

in forests,

small things recoil into silence,

their senses

eroded beyond fear.



When great souls die,

the air around us becomes

light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,

see with

a hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened,

examines,

gnaws on kind words

unsaid,

promised walks

never taken.


Great souls die and

our reality, bound to

them, takes leave of us.

Our souls,

dependent upon their

nurture,

now shrink, wizened.

Our minds, formed

and informed by their

radiance,
fall away.

We are not so much maddened

as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of
dark, cold

caves.



And when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always

irregularly. Spaces fill

with a kind of

soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed. They existed.

We can be. Be and be

better. For they existed.