Be Held in Words
when you miss someone
Solitude • Grief • Perspective • Hope
Featured Collection
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” ”
— Emily Dickinson
Featured Collection
Poem
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry
Berry, Wendell. “The Peace of Wild Things.” 2012. Scottish Poetry Library, https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/peace-wild-things-0/ Accessed August 14, 2026.
Poem
Nothing is Lost
Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we loved have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled,
Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes
Each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy, before
Before we could even know or understand
The implications of our wonderland. There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears
Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar scent
An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night.
Noel Coward
Coward, Noel. “Nothing is Lost.” 2007. The Writer’s Almanac. https://www.writersalmanac.org/index.html%3Fp=9384.html. Accessed August 16, 2026.
The Wild Edge of Sorrow
Book
“There is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness, some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable and what is most exquisitely alive. Through this, I have come to have a lasting faith in grief.”
Francis Weller
Pushing Through
Poem
It’s possible I am pushing through solid rock
in flintlike layers, as the ore lies, alone;
I am such a long way in I see no way through,
and no space: everything is close to my face,
and everything close to my face is stone.
I don’t have much knowledge yet in grief
so this massive darkness makes me small.
You be the master: make yourself fierce, break in:
then your great transforming will happen to me,
and my great grief cry will happen to you.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke, Rainer Maria. “Pushing Through” in Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. and ed. Robert Bly (New York: Harper and Row, 1981) 55.
When Things Fall Apart
Book
“Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not be squeamish about taking a good look.”
Pema Chodron
The Thing Is
Poem
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
Ellen Bass
Bass, Ellen. "The Thing Is." 2022. Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/151844/the-thing-is Accessed August 16, 2026.
Book
The Year of Magical Thinking
“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.”
Joan Didion
Book
Always a Sibling: The Forgotten Mourner's Guide to Grief
“The weight is often invisible to others, but not to me— or to you. We move forward and try to rebuild our lives, but just because we carry the weight doesn’t mean it isn’t heavy.”
Annie Sklaver Orenstein
Poem
A Prayer
Refuse to fall down.
If you cannot refuse to fall down, refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down,
lift you heart toward heaven,
and like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled—
and it will be filled.
You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you from
lifting your heart toward heaven—
only you.
It is in the midst of misery that so much becomes clear.
The one who says nothing good came of this,
is not yet listening.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Pinkola Estes, Clarissa. The Faithful Gardener, Harper Collins, San Francisco, 1995.
Poem
Remember
Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the strongest point of time.
Remember sundown and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are: red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people are you.
Remember you are this universe and this universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.
Joy Harjo
Harjo, Joy. "Remember." 1983. Poets.org, https://poets.org/poem/remember-0 Accessed August 16, 2026.
Poem
Feeling Fucked Up
Lord she's gone done left me done packed / up and split /
and I with no way to make her come back and everywhere the world
is bare bright bone white crystal sand glistens
dope death dead dying and jiving drove her away made her take her laughter and her smiles
and her softness and her midnight sighs--
Fuck Coltrane and music and clouds drifting in the sky
fuck the sea and trees and the sky and birds and alligators
and all the animals that roam the earth
fuck marx and mao fuck fidel and nkrumah and democracy and communism fuck smack and pot and red ripe tomatoes fuck joseph fuck mary fuck god jesus and all the disciples fuck fanon nixon and malcom fuck the revolution fuck freedom fuck the whole muthafucking thing
all i want now is my woman back
so my soul can sing
Etheridge Knight
Knight, Etheridge. “Feeling Fucked Up.” 1986. Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48752/feeling-fucked-up. Accessed August 16, 2026.