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Grief Support Groups Serving West Los Angeles, Encino and Agoura Hills

Poetry (Page 3)

My Debt

Michael Linsk is a poet and HOPE Connection group alum.

My wife, lover, friend, soul mate

is no longer a warm, living, breathing part of my life.

Death intervened.

The Uninvited Guest

A guest came to visit

uninvited

without so much as a knock at the door.

 

Grief arrived…

bathed in the empty stillness left by an aching absence,

my new companion rests comfortably among reminders of earlier times.

Allowing me freedom to go about creating a new life

but still present when time slows

and the roaring silence fails to fill the gaping void.

The Fourth Act

Don Phillipson is a writer who lives in Thousand Oaks. He was a HOPE Group member until October, 2018. 

I sit in a darkened theater, beautiful blue velvet curtains, having just
descended, guard the stage.

The curtain has just come down after the third act, and I sit stunned, dazed.

End of the Road

Five feet tall, forty years old, a steel witness to a life no more.   I open the four drawers and pull out the files. Some slim and clean, others heavy, showing their age. They store happy memories of travel around the world, celebrations of birthdays, and anniversaries, the joy of remodeling the house, receipts for various acquisitions, utility bills and bank…

No Ruined Stone

When the dead return they will come to you in dream and in waking, will be the bird knocking, knocking against glass, seeking a way in, will masquerade as the wind, its voice made audible by the tongues of leaves, greedily lapping, as the waves’ self-made fugue is a turning and returning, the dead will not then nor ever again desert you,…

I Exhale

I exhale. The breath born but a moment ago recedes into the past as I await the next breath to begin. Because every breath is a gateway between past and future, breathing is an ever-present metaphor for the temporal world in which we live. Nature’s patterns proceed in rhythms. Requiring belief in life’s continuity in stark counter-point to the reality of our…

The Blindfold

The children tied a blindfold around his head. He was spun around and around, his sense of direction befuddled. He didn’t know which way to turn. Come and play, they call to him. But how? The blindfold obscures all, forcing him to encounter a world infused with uncertainty. So too for me, the loss of my spouse spun my world around leaving…

The Path Ahead

It has been said we observe life as if walking backwards, a vision of our past in clear focus while our future remains an enigma.   Yet, on a path through a forest glen all of our senses are aware. Sunlight warms our skin, sounds and smells emanating from throughout our sphere fill our senses.   If we but look we see everything…