There are many forms of death by Kevin Hershey, writer in Writing Circles for Healing workshop

There are many different forms of death

 

There’s the death of the bright yellow tulips

brought to my grandmother on Easter Sunday

already browning in their vase by Tuesday.

The death she awaits, as her green eyes grow foggier

each day staring toward the ceiling, looking for the place she knows she will go next.

This will be the death of the last immigrant

death when her green eyes close

and cease to reflect the green hills and gray seas of her home

and death of the stories she might never have told us.

 

There’s death in the piles of unread newspapers by her entry

faceless, nameless, technicolor death in oil-rich nations or marathon massacres.

Death was in the brown leaves that crumpled on the grass last fall

buried beneath a blanket of snow

only to resurface this spring, wet.

There was the death of that deer on Highway 61

who dashed out of the woods

and now she’s crawling with flies.

Hundreds of deaths all over the windshield

smudges obliterated by sprinkling skies

above the lakes next to the road.

Sometimes we call death

passing or crossing over or moving on

when it’s really just death

but sometimes it isn’t death at all

 

My hair was already dead

when it fell off my head

as chemotherapy caused the death of me from the inside out

a million little deaths in my cells that I could not even imagine

The backyard compost was full of death

when I scattered it with black shiny locks

greening orange peels,

the slimy pieces of onions we carelessly discarded,

old autumn leaves,

coffee grounds from many mornings ago.

My dead hair mixed with our dead waste.

It made a bed for next year’s tulips.        

Kevin Hershey returned to his hometown of St. Paul after completing college last year. Currently, his life is dedicated to full-time soul searching.

There's the Light (Writing Circles for Healing workshop participant)

                                        There's the Light from My Grandbaby

                  There's the light from her smile that greets me each time she enters the room.

                  The light of morning that moves on her face like invisible eyes blinking.

                  The light from her eyes as blue as the ribbon tied in a bow around her white face.

                  There's the light from her laugh that makes me a child after she wails and cries then

                  stops as if she was saying, I fooled you again.

                  There's the light from Van Gogh and Cezanne so perfectly arranged it moves my

                  blood to boil in my heart and sends little bubbles up my spine                                                                                                

                  and stimulates my mind for creations that I create.

                  The light from the moon that spreads in holy halos from its edge.

                  There's the light vanilla smell that emanates from her cheek against mine as we 

                  wrestle for the toys. 

                  There's the heat within the sun like the heat from her hands as she hugs my neck.

                  

                  There's the light through the shattered windshield after the wreck.

                  The light of winter’s skies, gray and still as the casket’s canopy.

                  There's the light reflections off my broom faced wrinkles as they gather as my mind

                  grows old and holes perforate my brain and block the memories of her.

                  There's the red light from a cat’s eye the in middle of the night Edgar Allen Poe.

                   There's the absence of light below the earth where the bugs and spiders clean the bones.

                   There's the empty light without her, without god, without soul, just an animal waiting for death.

                   There's the holy light of belief that relieves me as I lay down for my last sleep.

                Also, there's the light of god seen through the tunnel 
 that beckons me to her and to heaven 
 and to all my missing relatives and friends 

 that fly together on wings

 of wind to a better dimension of time and space.

Mark's statement: In '98 I contracted a serious case of colon cancer so I moved back here to be with my family.  After many months of treatment, the cancer went into remission; there has not been any since. In 2001 I was accidentally shot with a large caliber rifle and spent  months in the hospital near death many times. It has taken me 50 operations and 7 to 8 years pulling myself back together fighting chronic pain and infections. It is a story in itself of fighting through physical and mental trauma. I was always an artist ever since I was 5 or 6 when my brother and I started to draw to escape an alcoholic father and poverty.  I was always the best artist in the class and was chosen to do murals and art projects for the class. Through the years I've spent my time painting and writing poetry and short stories

 Mark East was a participant in Writing Circles for Healing presented by Wendy Brown-Baez and held at the Wellstone Center in St Paul. Wendy Brown-Báez is a fiscal year 2012 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is funded, in part, by the Minnesota State Legislature from the State’s art and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the  people of Minnesota on Nov, 4, 2008