Love Liberates

Maya Angelou

The world will miss Maya Angelou.  I will miss Maya Angelou.  A woman, although one I’ve never physically met, I have felt connected to in spirit.  Thank you for everything you have taught me through your words.   The ones on paper or those I’ve heard in your interviews in your deep, but light-filled tone.  I will remember the bass in your voice that shook my ears and beat on the door to my heart and forced me to open up to myself and get to know who I really am.  Thank you for inspiration and thank you for your honesty; allowing us to peer into your life and know that there is no road from perfection or one designed to get us there.  We have our choices.  You said, “I created myself”, “I have taught myself so much”.  From you, I learned that I could do the same.  Thank you!

 

‘When Great Trees Fall’—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.”

 

 

`good health and high spirits