Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate: 

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

By William Shakespeare

source

I will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,

and I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.

- Charles Bukowski

Darling

You might forget the exact sound of her voice,
Or how her face looked when sleeping.
You might forget the sound of her quiet weeping
Curled into the shape of a half moon,

When smaller than herself, she seemed already to be leaving
Before she left, when the blossom was on the trees
And the sun was out, and all seemed good in the world.
I held her hand and sang a song from when I was a girl –

Heil Ya Ho Boys, Let her go Boys
And when I stopped singing she had slipped away,
Already a slip of a girl again, skipping off,
Her heart light, her face almost smiling.

And what I didn’t know, or couldn’t see then,
Was that she hadn’t really gone.
The dead don’t go till you do, loved ones.
The dead are still here holding our hands

- Jackie Kay

source

I can’t say I loved you. I just can’t

Because it makes it sound as if my love is past tense. Gone, finished, ended.

And that is so far from the truth.

My love is not in the past. It will never be gone.

I love you now. Still.

You didn’t take all this love away with you. It stays. It lingers.

Some days it jumps up and hits me in the face just to remind me that it is still here. Still persevering.

Some days it nudges me. Challenges me to keep going. Daring me to find the strength to get through the day.

But mostly, it just resonates inside of me with everything I do. With every step forward and every glance back. Every close of my eyes. Every breath.

My love is not dependent on you being here.

There is nowhere far enough,

and nothing permanent enough

to stop me from loving you.

So I will not say I loved you.

Because I love you.

Still.

Becky Hemsley 2023

'Still' is from When I Am Gone - poems for grief and loss

They asked me if she was strong.

And I said yes.

I said yes without hesitation.

Because I’d seen her pick her heavy heart up off the floor, even when it weighed a ton.

Because I’d watched her claw her way back from rock bottom, even when it was a steep and treacherous climb.

Because I’d seen her lift herself up and drag herself through life, even when she was tired and weary to her bones.

Because I’d watched her persevere, persist and press on even when she was carrying the weight of her world on her shoulders.

And they told me I’d misunderstood.

They meant how strong was she physically?

How much could she hold in her hands and carry in her arms?

But it was not me who had misunderstood true strength. It was them.

Because they hadn’t realised that

all too often,

the heaviest things we hold

and the biggest weights we carry

are the things that can’t be seen.

******

Becky Hemsley 2023

Beautiful artwork by Patrik at PtArtGallery (via Etsy)

'Strong is from my fourth collection 'Letters from Life': https://a.co/d/9XrZH5W

My Country

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold –
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land –
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand –
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

******

https://www.dorotheamackellar.com.au/my-country/

I missed you quietly today. 

I missed you quietly today. So quietly that no one noticed.

I missed you as I climbed out of bed and as I brushed my teeth; 

when I waited at the lights on the drive into work and as I heard the rain outside my window.

I missed you as I ordered lunch and as I kicked off my shoes when I got home; 

as I switched off the lights and climbed into bed for the night.

I missed you without tears or noise or fanfare.

But oh how I felt it.

I felt it in the morning, at lunchtime, in the evening and at night. 

I felt it as I woke, as I waited, as I worked. 

I felt it at home, on the road, in the light, in the dark, in the rain.

I felt it in every one of those moments, 

each one sitting heavier and heavier 

as the weight of me missing you kept growing and growing.

Yes, I missed you so quietly today.

But I felt it so loudly.

***

Becky Hemsley Poetry 2024

"When I die, 

I want you to live while

I wait for you, asleep,

I want for your ears to go on

hearing the wind,

for you to smell the sea

that we loved together

and for you to go on walking

the sand where we walked.

I want for what I love

to go on living and as for you,

I loved you and sang you

above everything,

for that, go on flowering,

flowery one,

so that you reach all that

My Love orders for you,

so that my shadow passes

through your hair,

so that they know by this

the reason for my song."

 Pablo Neruda,