Goodbye

A poem of loss and gried

Life was filled with sunshine
not so many yesterdays ago
It was you who brought the sunshine
and the blackness with a stroke of its mighty hand
That took the sunshine away
I cannot recall the name of this blackness
Or maybe I do not want to know.

I am sure the tears will come to pass
The sorrow must depart
You will live forever in my memory
But only in memory
For I know that yesterday and I
cannot meet again
For the space of time between today and yesterday
is longer than time can tell.

The gray of grief is now gone
Tomorrow will bring a new dawn
You are gone
I will say
Goodbye
The sun is peeking over at me
And so I remember with no bitterness the name
Death
though powerful
Cannot destroy love.

Author's Note

I have to add a weird fact -- I tend to use grey and gray intermittently, depending on the poem. On advice from another - I took out the rest of my notes and will let this stand on its own.

Reviews

[Chris]

Sometimes when I comment, I describe a sense of an aftertaste a "work" left in my mind. I didn't feel a sense of loss or letting go - though the words WERE right, the "feeling" wasn't. But, I DID read the descriptive BEFORE the poem however... I really wish you hadn't posted it there because now I am unsure whether it was your poem or your note that gave me that aftertaste. ...the Author's Note would have been more telling - at least for me. I do understand "empathy" well (in my own mind). And this was not meant as a dig - in any way... just a comment.

[Lyn Anderson]

Yeah I get it. And maybe you are just more perceptive than most. Give yourself some credit.

[Chris]

YOU have a style to your writes... The flow is smooth and the word skills evident. The "Dance" touched me the most - perhaps rightly so. I remembered its name AND the Northern lights WITHOUT having to page back.

[Jon Roggie]

I missed this by how many years? Amazing how words seem to return. Now, I want to see the description from when you first posted it.

[Lyn Anderson]

Well, I have only been here since 2013, but this one is from 1983. It is not the first poem I wrote, but it is the first I kept. I had a teacher who said there was no such thing as perfect in English. I then entered this poem in a spoken poetry contest and got a score of 100. That said, originally I posted this to prove that depth of emotion can be found in a poem written by a person with very little experience. Which, at 13, I had very little experience with death at the time.

[Jon Roggie]

Well, I was about three years older during 1983. This would have brought my English teacher out of his seat!

[Lyn Anderson]

Thanks. When someone says "you can't do it", I usually take that as a challenge.

[h d e rushin]

wonderfully written KL........dana

[Lyn Anderson]

Thank you so much.

[Kesha]

This is simply amazing. At first I thought you were speaking of someone, you loved, willingly leaving. But alas you were speaking of death. This is wonderful, how heartbreaking and cruel death can be, unlike love, death knows no bounds. Wonderful write KL

[Lyn Anderson]

Thank you very much. This piece seems so simple to me, yet it was how I wrote at the time, which is now over 30 years ago. Life happens in a blink of an eye, and I have lost many people I loved since this poem was written.

[Kesha]

Yes it certainly does go by fast, way too fast I feel. And it's the simplicity of the poem that makes it outstanding. You conveyed so much emotion without it becoming overbearing. Nicely done. And I am sorry about you losing your loved ones. Unfortunately that is the circle of life.

[Daniel Sala]

"For I know that yesterday and I
cannot meet again
For the space of time between today and yesterday
is longer than time can tell."

I really like this piece, it carries the impossibility of turning back clocks to before a loss, and the horrid velocity at which these things happen, a split second takes away some-one loved forever like walking through a doorway not through choice. The positive ending adds to its quality.

[Sami Khalil]

A very nice poem. I like the ending the most...:)...................

[Lyn Anderson]

Thank you. I post it mostly because of the assumptions often made about some direct personal experience driving the writing. Yes, we pour our emotions into them, but not necessarily from our own personal tragedies.

[Sami Khalil]

Wow. Good to know...You are welcome...:)...........