Ailey, Baldwin, Floyd, Killens, and Mayfield by Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills
shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even
elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things
recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us
becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes,
briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly
sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised
walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them,
takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now
shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by
their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to
the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace
blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind
of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the
same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and
be
better. For they existed.

I've been so attached to this poem lately. I read and re-read it pretty often. It's been 3 months and it doesn't feel like it at all. 7:30pm is when I found out - I think about it the 16th of every month. Is that normal?! I can't stand the sound of sirens which I guess is a natural reaction. They're not coming back. They're REALLY not coming back and that's completely unbelievable to me. I've been trying to stay positive - trying not to dwell on this too much but in reality I haven't really been my normal self in months. I know it's like that for a lot of people too. I guess this is just the way things are supposed to be right now. In refrencing Angelou's poem... I think I am hovering at the second to last stanza as far as how I am feeling right now. Just not completely 100% myself and not yet ready to let go. I don't like faking it anymore, I'm sad and I'm still not okay with what happened. I'm going back to Tech in a couple of weeks just to prep my house for move in. I want to bring some stuff there ahead of time and maybe paint a bit. I also think a trip to the stones is long overdue. There are less people there in the summer so it'll be good to go to Stack's stone and reflect without too many people watching. I'm bringing him flowers, I've decided that. I don't even know what type of flowers he likes... it bothers me because that's something I wish I would have had the time to figure out. Instead, I guess I'm going to go with lillies because they're my favorite. This is the only place where he is tangible - a stone. It makes me think of the song "A Stone" by Okkervil River... "You love a stone, because it’s dark, and it’s old, and if it could start being alive you’d stop living alone. " Look up the lyrics, you'll see what I mean...