Because I Could Not Stop For Death

Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me
The Carriage held but just Ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the School, where Children strove
At recess in the ring
We passed the fields of gazing grain
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us
The dews drew quivering and chill
For only Gossamer, my gown
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the GROUND
The roof was scarcely visible
The cornice in the ground.

Since then 'tis centuries and yet
Feels shorter than the DAY
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.


by Emily Dickinson

Welcome to Holland

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this…



When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.



After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."



"Holland?!" you say. "What do you mean, Holland?" I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy.



But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.



The important thing is that they haven't taken you to some horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.



So you must go out and buy a new guidebook. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.



It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts.



But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."



The pain of that will never, ever, go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.



But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.

Written by Emily Perl Kingsley


To read more beautiful and heartwarming autism poems click here.

The mountains are calling, and I must go.

a poem for the broken hearted.

This is a poem for the broken hearted.

For the abandon.

For heavy eyelids,

and led boots.

This is a poem for those who wonder

if they'll ever be able to shake the thought of their ex-lover.

But pray they never do.

This is a poem for those who's hearts have been broken so much,

that it only pumps sawdust into your veins.

For the constantly hazy eyed,

constantly drunk,

constantly stomach punched

constantly hurt.

Constantly changing the songs on your ipod

because every single one reminds you of her.

Because she has branded a hole the shape of herself into your soul.

Left you so fucking broken,

even God looks at you and shrugs his shoulders.

Somedays, you will wish your snooze button was a noose.

Somedays, you the only thought more unbearable

than the ones about her,

are the ones where your mother is watching your bloody shirt

tumble in the dryer.

And somedays, youre worried even that thought won't keep you alive.

But listen,

you are not a human sacrifice.

I am not a human sacrifice.

I will no longer bleed in your name.

I will no longer drive past your fucking house,

and I will no longer look for you every time I go to a coffee shop.

And I will no longer look at red ford focuses

hoping you're behind the steering wheel.

You're never behind the steering wheel.

I will no longer cry after I have an orgasm.

I will no longer imagine that the girls I fuck are you.

I will no longer fuck girls.

See, I'm 24 years old and I still think love

is in the front drawer of a one night stand.

Every morning for me is empty,

dwelling in a place where the sun never rises.

Because some days, I still think you were the one who put the sun there

in the first place.

This is a poem for the broken hearted.

I know that time is your friend now,

and it seems like she even broke the hands on your clock,

but the crow bar she jambed up underneath your ribcage,

will rattle loose again.

And that shit hurts even when it's coming back out.

And every time someone says to me “it gets better”

I kinda want to punch them in the throat,

but it gets better.

Eventually,

after a while.

At least that's what I keep telling myself.

by Erica

http://ericaisabird.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-poem-for-broken-hearted.html

“There Is No Word for Goodbye”

Sokoya, I said, looking through

the net of wrinkles into

wise black pools

of her eyes.

What do you say in Athabascan

when you leave each other?

What is the word

for goodbye?

A shade of feeling rippled  

the wind-tanned skin.

Ah, nothing, she said,

watching the river flash.

She looked at me close.

We just say, Tlaa. That means,

See you.

We never leave each other.

When does your mouth

say goodbye to your heart?

She touched me light

as a bluebell.

You forget when you leave us;

you're so small then.

We don't use that word.

We always think you're coming back, I

but if you don't,

we'll see you some place else.

You understand.

There is no word for goodbye.

Sokoya: Aunt (mother's sister)

Tlaa: See you 


 From Mary TallMountain’s volume of poems The Light on the Wall. 

Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990.

I Can’t Remember

I can’t remember
skipping rocks on the beach
My childhoods forgotten
My childhoods lost.

Going to the doctor
Making mud cakes
Playing with friends in the street.

I can’t remember
All the bereavement
My childhoods forgotten
My childhoods lost.

The doctor doing surgery
Me getting pain pills
I can’t remember any of it
None of it’s clear.

I still can’t remember,
How it’s gone
My childhoods forgotten
My childhoods lost.


by Jamesha Willis