Friday, March 04, 2011

 

Haiku Friday: Those who have gone


Earlier this week I pulled off of my shelf a book that Scott Davis gave me many years ago: Sermons, by Peter J. Gomes.

The next day, I learned that he had died. Gomes was a lot of things-- a clear and insightful writer, a nearly lifelong Republican, a gay man, a Baptist minister, a black intellectual leader, and (most prominently) the minister at Harvard's Memorial Church, and a professor at Harvard's Divinity School. Ronald Reagan chose him to give the benediction at his inauguration.

I didn't know Peter Gomes, but I loved his work, which I sometimes agreed with, and always felt challenged by. Our world is not thick with men like him, and that is too bad. He died at 68, and I wish that there had been more years, because we needed him.

So, let's haiku about those who are gone. It can be a recent loss, or one further back, someone you knew or just knew of.

Here is mine:

Strong, insistent voice-
He said "Jesus unsettles"
He always was right.

Now it is your turn... don't worry too much about haiku conventions this week; just make it three lines and true.

Comments:
Brighter than the sun,
I was always in your shadow.
Now--clouds.
 
Poor Fred of Austin
He guessed a girl's weight wrong
Now he is all gone.
 
I was seventeen
I never got to tell you
But I think you know.


RIP Thomas Alan Young
 
:)
 
I watched you ride away
that day-and turned my back.
Oh, if I had known.
 
Guns always scared me;
D*mn that broken "safety" catch:
If only ... if ... if ...
 
Just about to call
Never got that chance
Goodbye too soon.
 
Death is final in
a way that nothing else is.
Say Goodbye EARLY.
 
I met him at the
candy store, he turned around
and smiled at me.

You get the picture?
 
Forty three years.
A lifetime, really.
But still a vacuum.

You carried me, birthed me and loved me.
And then: gone.

Will I know you?
Will you know me?
When we meet.
 
1,2,3 petals
he loves me he loves me not
the flower tell the truth
 
I guess it is time
To stop being angry
You didn't choose to die.

But the what-ifs
And the wonderment remain
I wish I knew what could have been.
 
As I get older,
I recognize your wisdom.
I share the wisdom and you live on.

Whose voices do we hear
As we listen?
Lives long gone, still present.
 
Another Lent

died a long time gone
a stranger in a strange land
I try but I fail
 
this has nothing to do with any of this, but i found it to be of utmost urgency.
i found this post on a friend's facebook page today. if true, it's life-changing:

PLEASE put this on your status if you know someone (or are related to someone) who has been eaten by pandas. Pandas are nearly unstoppable and, in case you didn't know, they can also breathe fire. 93% of people won't copy and paste this, because they have already been eaten by pandas. 6% of people are sitting in the shower armed with fire extinguishers and the remaining 1% are awesome and will repost this.
7 hours ago · LikeUnlike ·
 
Mem’ries faded, then
you were gone too, but God keeps
what Alzheimer’s takes.
 
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