Poetry Friday


It’s a lovely Friday afternoon and many of us are finishing things up at work before leaving the office for Memorial Day Weekend. After a busy week and as I prepare to shift into the weekend, I find the reflection and creativity in these three poems welcome. I hope you enjoy them as well!

I AM STILL ME 
Look at me
I am still me
I may not look or act like I did years ago, But I am still me.

When I am scared,
I may cry
I may wander.
Reassure me, talk with me.

When I am frustrated,
I may scream
I may strike out.
Let me know I am safe, explain to me what I should do.

When I am cold or hungry,
I may yell
I may be restless.
Help me find comfort, ask me what I like to eat.

Look at me.
I am still me.
I just need your help now to guide me,
to comfort me.
BUT I AM STILL ME

–Erika K. Salmeron, RN
Nurse Manager of Dementia Unit
2006

~

Four Things
Four things
where I would
rather not
find a lump:
custard
gravy
mashed potato
and bosoms.

–Claire Calman
~

Eternal Now
Take a moment
to check and see if you are actually here.

Before there is right and wrong,
we are just here.
Before there is good or bad, or unworthy,
and before there is the sinner or the saint,
we are just here.
Just meet here, where silence is—
where the stillness inside dances.
Just here, before knowing something, or not knowing.
Just meet here where all points of view
merge into one point,
and the one point disappears.

Just see if you can meet right now

where you touch the eternal,
and feel the eternal living and dying at each moment.
Just to meet here—
before you were an expert,
before you were beginner.
To just be here,
where you are what you always will be,
where you will never add anything to this,
or subtract anything.

Meet here, where you want nothing,
and where you are nothing.
The here that is unspeakable.
Where we meet only mystery to mystery,
or we don’t meet at all.
Meet here where you find yourself
by not finding yourself.
In this place where quietness is deafening,
and the stillness moves too fast to catch it.

Meet here where you are what you want
and you want you what you are
and everything falls away into radiant emptiness.

–Adyashanti