A Poem Worth Loving

The Poet Asks Forgiveness

BY FAY ZWICKY

Dead to the world I have failed you

Forgive me, traveler.

 

Thirsty, I was no fountain

Hungry, I was not bread

Tired, I was no pillow

 

Forgive my unwritten poems:

the many I have frozen with irony

the many I have trampled with anger

the many I have rejected in self-defiance

the many I have ignored in fear

 

unaware, blind or fearful

I ignored them.

They clamoured everywhere

those unwritten poems.

They sought me out day and night

and I turned them away.

 

Forgive me the colours

they might have worn

Forgive me their eclipsed faces

They dared not venture from

the unwritten lines.

 

Under each inert hour of my silence

died a poem, unheeded.

My thoughts:

This poem is a reminder of all those regrets, all those what ifs that we excuse with fear, anger etc.  

Big Question Section1: The Abstract

Social scientists have long been interested in the questions of how the similarities and the differences in the views of the afterlife and the social reactions to death of different cultures are explained, and the systematic order that can be found in these similarities and differences.  Death is an ineluctable personal experience, which remains outside of an individual's self-reflection throughout his or her entire life.  In order to locate the problem of death in the social construction of reality in a more or less reassuring way, and thus effectively abate the anxiety emerging from the cognitive ambivalence of death, every culture is bound to attribute to it some meaning. This meaning, accessible and perceivable by human individuals, involves constructing a unique concept of death and afterlife. Religions offer a variety of answers, some seemingly credible and some beyond belief. Their explanations often contradict one another, adding to the confusion and uncertainty about what happens after death. A very common idea is that people are born with immortal souls. Many believe that after death the soul is conscious and proceeds to a literal place or condition of bliss or torment. Others teach that at death the soul is absorbed into a "greater consciousness." Some expect to be reincarnated, coming back to earth as another person or as an animal.

http://www.deathreference.com/A-Bi/Afterlife-in-Cross-Cultural-Perspective.html

http://www.ucg.org/booklet/what-happens-after-death/mystery-death/