GriefNet Library: Poetry
From [email protected] Sep 13 15:53:01 1995 Date: Thu, 7 Sep 1995 17:24:55 -0400 From: Emily Carton To: [email protected] Subject: September September should be my favorite month. Here in Washington, the heavy air begins to shift, and the air that moves in is like the sweetest embrace. The leaves are already beginning to fall - a few at a time, and the yellow finches stay close to the feeders before many of them make their way further south. The school bus came and picked up the children - off they rode with their backpacks to a school that I wished I had gone to as a child - where part of the goal is to create an environment where they can feel the happiness and freedom of learning and movement through a campus on an old farm - a freedom of space and movement and safety that happens as a priviledge of childhood - and for children who have the priviledge... The windows are open, the lightweight quilt is on the bed, and the flowers, in their last effort of the year put on a magestic show beneath the elm tree. The street is quiet during the day, and all the dogs feel like puppies, reenergized after this long heat wave. But for a writer the present and past always mingle; memory is everywhere. I put things on hold, for those stories, for the journal notes: my own September's past when I cried each morning and vomited before leaving for a school where the teachers were blind in that the students were a "body" and not individuals fighting their own little demons. September was the month that my sister died, when I cried in the lunch line, knowing that hundreds of eyes were watching me and wondering why I was crying. But I knew what they didn't: that even though no one had told me I knew that when my sister left for the hospital a few days earlier that I would never see her again. The memories come, but I look out my window and say, " I am glad to be here." And no matter what I really believe or don't believe - I know that this life is a gift and part of this life is my sorrow that has eased with time, but remains forever. posted 13 Sept. 1995 copyright Emily Carton, 1995 For permission to reprint contact the author [email protected] or 1839 Ingleside Terrace NW Washington, D.C., 20010 202 / 667-9385 For further information contact: Cendra (ken'dra) Lynn, Ph.D. Rivendell Resources [email protected] PO Box 3272 [email protected] Ann Arbor, MI, 48106-3272 (734) 761-1960 Grace happens
Last update: 21st January 2001
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