Because: Sow Love Whenever Possible. {poetry}
{source}
“Because” is a poem written in 2020 with reflection on what positive wisdom can be garnered from the death of loved ones and the consequent grief we go through.
Especially during that year, so many lost family members and friends. In our family, we lost six — my husband’s mother, sister, brother-in-law, and uncle, and my brother and aunt — within 10 months that year, not from the virus, but the loss was no less painful.
When I feel grief, writing often helps me to heal. This is one of those poems. Writing, in general, is very soothing as an emotional release. It’s like you allow the pain in your heart out on the paper, and if you are lucky, it stays there.
We think we have many, many years to live, but really, there will never be enough days. It seems like that lesson was felt strongly during pandemic times. The only solution to the dilemma of mortality, that I have been able to figure out, is to try to sow love and kindness whenever possible.
When I feel concern about not knowing when anyone I love will pass, or even myself, it helps me to do or say something nice to the people I come in contact with each day.
Six months after writing the original poem, I took a poetry workshop with Ellen Bass. During one of our sessions, a guest poet read a poem with a reversal of lines. I had never seen this done before, and I wanted to try it. I took my original version and played with the lines, so they worked both forward and in reverse. This is what came from that exercise.
***
Because we love so deeply,
there will never be enough days.
Each morning, help me to accept
the hours before me are a gift,
a blessing of the highest order.
Birds sing open-heartedly
even in a questioning sky,
endless strife that just won’t go away.
Our period of great uncertainty —
an invitation, possibly, to choose.
The only sensible plan I can see:
sow love and kindness, instead of fear.
Sow love and kindness, instead of fear,
the only sensible plan I can see,
an invitation, possibly, to choose.
Our period of great uncertainty —
endless strife that just won’t go away.
Even in a questioning sky,
the birds sing open-heartedly,
a blessing of the highest order.
The hours before me are a gift,
each morning, help me to accept
there will never be enough days,
because we love so deeply.
***
Carolyn Chilton Casas is a Reiki Master and teacher. Her favorite themes to write about are healing, awareness, and the life journey. Carolyn’s stories and poems have appeared in Braided Way, Energy, Odyssey, Reiki News Magazine, The Art of Healing, Touch, and in other publications. You can read more of Carolyn’s work on Instagram or in her first collection of poems titled Our Shared Breath.
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