Spring crochets leaves onto branches,
stippling blue sky with green lace.
Pursed tulips await rain until sunshine
encourages petals to invite sun and bees.
Umbrella in hand, I shade my eyes
looking at the sky in speculation.
Birds crisscross skies cloudy to bright and back.
Spring is a both/and time of year.
Day lily days
bright with summer promise
trumpeting joy.
Photo and Haiku by Tasha Halpert
There is a Hebrew saying that goes, if there were no grief to hollow out our hearts, where would there be room for joy? I would add, or compassion.
We learn about pain by feeling it ourselves. We learn about grief and bereavement by losing loved ones. The lessons life has to teach may be harsh or gentle but those that teach compassion invariably revolve around a sense of loss. Perhaps this is what is meant by the hollowing of the heart by grief.
The sense of loss makes an emptiness where there has been fullness, aloneness where there was companionship. When we feel these feelings we can cry for them, letting our tears soothe the pain and wash it away, or we can cry out against them and they will harden to rock within us and weigh us down. What fills that hollow place is love. But we must pour it out to our own selves
As we grow older, if we absorb and process our life experiences, we develop that part of us able to look with love and forgiveness at whatever life presents. Those who die and leave us behind help hollow our hearts. As we let go the ache of missing the physical presence, it becomes easier to accept the loss. Time is the best healer, and patience with ourselves.
As I grow on in years, my losses
Leave larger holes behind;
in my life’s landscape, grief has been useful,
reminding me that all we have is now;
we had best enjoy it because it is a gift.
My grief is not a weight, nor a cloud,
it is not a blindfold hiding joy,
rather it is an ever giving spring
reminding me to look, to breathe, to know
that all life blooms and fades and love grows on.
Photo and text by Tasha Halpert
From high in the sky
sun sinks slowly,
lengthening afternoons and evenings.
Time seems suspended.
Children’s days are long
and full of freedom.
For me, the dwindling has begun.
In ripening fruit
in scent of sun warmed grasses
in insect choruses
the beginning of the end sings
Tasha Halpert
Brilliant forsythia fingers
fling their exuberance
into the bright blue air.
Red budding twigs
holler “here I am, shine on me.”
Forsythia sunshine
fills my eyes, Maple flowers
jingle, “Welcome pollinating friends.”
Spring buds open everywhere
blossoming their way into summer.
By Tasha Halpert
Photo by Tasha Halpert
March wind speeds in my blood
asking
calling
hurry, scurry, thrust
against the old
cold unbending
winter crust.
I feel it in the air
break through
burst into light
lengthening
toward warmth not quite
achieved
yet it pulls green shoots
up through
thawing earth
toward the sun.
I too break through
frozen winter self
emerging
into the poignant
greenness
newly
born in
every
spring.
Tasha Halpert
Seeing you as you lean over
your back still straight and strong
your tallness apparent,
a place in my chest warms
as a wave of love moves through it–
The mill of time
refines us with its turning
churning our moments
into years and decades.
our days make a wheel
that turns with time’s flow
moving us
from then to when,
and we together
in the flow of our love
revolve
endlessly in the now.
Pujakins 