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is this anything

~ a compendium, by Nancy Coughlin

is this anything

Tag Archives: death

With winter nearing, I remember spring (a poem)

23 Monday May 2016

Posted by is this anything in poem

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acceptance, apophenia, death, freedom, grief, love, memory, mom, poem, transience

Flower With Snow 11

With winter nearing

With winter nearing, I remember spring:
A fickle March, before my mother died.
Her bed lay flush with window. Side by side,
We watched another snowfall—wondering

At all the forms a snowflake takes: like bone
Turned ash, like milkweed floss, like feather.
Tonight they fell in tufts that clung together,
But for a few who braved the fall alone.

Heavy, wet, yet floating. It was night,
The storm lit from beneath. (My mother’s room
Was lucky, disconcerting midnight gloom
By posing, drapes pulled wide, above the light

That advertised the doors below, where hearse
And ambulance were meant to go.) We watched
The snow in halogenic awe untouched,
Unbroken now, by dietician, nurse,

Aide, hospice worker, laundress, orderly,
Their squeaking soles no longer restless hounds
That whined and sniffed at daylit doors; their rounds
Unspooled at last. And so we lay there free.

We lay there, clumped and clinging, and we felt
That we might never die, but only melt.

On days you can’t remember (a poem)

29 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by is this anything in hannah, poem

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Tags

autism, death, grief, Hannah, motherhood, writing

On days you can’t remember

On days you can’t remember who she was,
you disinter the pictures (you don’t want to!),
then focus on benign peripheries,
so that the first contritenesses that haunt you

will show themselves banal: ‘whatever happened
to that armoire?’ ‘That dishwasher broke down.’
‘I miss the velvet couch.’ ‘I wish we hadn’t
let the thistle overrun the lawn.’

Entice your vision toward more pointed hints:
Salute the crib, the changing table. Welcome
a glimpse of diaper bag. Recall its scents
of disinfectant, sour milk, and talcum.

You deftly sidestep ‘what’s she thinking here?’
and ‘does she know it’s me behind the camera?’–
yet trip on ‘why such tangles in her hair?’
and ‘did we never change from our pajamas?’

Retreat beneath the quilt her grandma made.
Review the popup book, rewind the mobile.
Respin the top, recoil within the bed.
Renurse, resing, resigh, relaugh, rebabble.

And, should you need to, build a sturdy house
of quatrain stacked on quatrain. Window-free
at last, live lyrically, your mind diffuse–
all squinting rhymes and harmless frippery.

Go, dear one. Pile words one upon another.
Form thick iambic castles, if you wish.
You have the right, love—you who were her mother—
to veil what life remains in artifice.

hannah

remember (a quote from Stephen King)

13 Thursday Nov 2014

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autism, death, family, grief, loss, memoir, memory, Stephen King, writing

 

soldier, piano

A little talent is a good thing to have…but the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.   –Stephen King

both (quotation by Nassim Nicholas Taleb)

14 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by is this anything in autism, quotation, twitter tweets

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acceptance, autism, black swan, both, compassion, death, empathy, grace, Hannah, happiness, illusion, imbalance, letting go, loss, motherhood, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, play, quotation, randomness, surrender, transience, tweet, union, yin yang, zen

“Love without sacrifice is like theft.” —Nassim Nicholas Taleb100_1497

@zerosumr (a tweet)

27 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

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acceptance, apophenia, both, comfort, death, friendship, grace, imkertje, metaphor, miracle, paradox, randomness, surrender, transience, tweet, zen

u know how i know yer Here, mijn schatje? Coz w/ yr death u finally taught me yr ineffable truth: that Here is an infinite place.

laughing buddha

 

 

Sonnet 73 (William Shakespeare)

16 Sunday Mar 2014

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aging, death, imkertje, love, miracle, shakespeare, surrender, time, transience, zen

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

here (a tweet)

15 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

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death, eternity, grace, imkertje, paradox, tweet, zen

Maybe souls who leave their bodies are still here. Maybe it’s just that “here” turns out to be a very big place.

Image

so far (a tweet)

13 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

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acceptance, birth, death, grace, grief, imkertje, miracle, silence, surrender, transience, tweet, zen

So far: death has been my most successful–and tersest–teacher. (Life’s a good teacher too, but distractingly verbose.) Image

typo (diary excerpt)

07 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by is this anything in journal entry

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death, fear, free-wheeling fifth-letter change, illusion, imbalance, metaphor, randomness, typo, zen

…  I’ve noticed that Tara [my friend; also, my beleaguered housekeeper] maintains a fifteen-minute window on either side of her arrival. Right now the time is 3:40. In five minutes I must begin to be on the lookout for her. And so it seems these days with death too—I feel so often lately the anxiety before the anxiety. How dare I say I live forever, when I’m so terrified of dying? I’m afraud …

Image

[Apologies to Tara for comparing her to death. (She is, in fact, the opposite.)]

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acceptance apophenia autism balance both choice comfort compassion freedom grace grief happiness illusion love memory metaphor paradox poem quotation randomness serendipity serenity surrender thinking out loud transience tweet writing zen

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