Grief Turns Hearts to Poetry
by Jim Richards

Three Poems by Angela Peterson

Recent events have turned many hearts to prayer. I have observed that many hearts have also been turned to prayer's frequent companion, poetry. Fear, grief, suffering, pain, and their opposites, when felt in extreme measures ache to find expression, and that expression often comes in prayer, or poetry, or a combination of the two.

In the psalms when David is deep in despair, or when he is filled with gratitude and hope he finds expression in a melding of prayer and poetry. Some of my favorite poems by Donne, Milton, Dylan Thomas, and others are fueled by difficult events-severe illness, blindness, the death of a child-events that provoked powerful emotions. Tempered by the restraints of language and poetic form, their words provide a moment of ecstatic catharsis.

The following poems by Angela Peterson, are fueled by similar difficulty and emotion. She summarizes the events that inspired these poems:

I was married for thirty-six years to a good and loving man who in 1996 decided that "the grass was greener" elsewhere, and I went through a very unwanted divorce. I remarried in 1998, but my new husband died after four months. Most of these poems were written as a result of the turmoil in my life and the tumult in my soul through all of this time. They are very personal, but represent the time of greatest growth in my life, and the writing of them fed me and helped heal me.

Although these poems are very personal to Angela, they are universal in their treatment of grief and pain, and considering the recent and current events, they might aid in the feeding and healing of us all.

Three poems by Angela Peterson:

For What

Divorce is far, far worse than death my friend.
Mainspring broken, even reason-
An empty space that walks and talks, a shell
That lives and bleeds for a season
In hell-
That gasps for air and grasps at a straw to
Just go on.

If you had died, and gone out of my life
With love and honor in your heart,
I would have grieved and keened and wept
With pain that we were now apart,
Bereft.But I would have had our eternity
To grow on.

You did not die-at least a temporal death.
No, you took our life and tossed it-
A sort of spiritual suicide
Of eternal life-and lost it
For pride,
And lust and fear, and the empty, worthless
Thing you won.

Oh, ye fair one! Why did you do this, why?
Sacrificed your exaltation,
Gave up your God and all your lifelong truth
Just to feel exhilaration,
And youth?
Now live your life with respect of none,
Not even your own?

I wait for you, erstwhile eternal mate.
The love I had has never died.
At last I'm healed and whole once more since then.
And you, my love, have been baptized
Again.
Dare I hope that in the heavens we could
Again be one?

The Journey

My heart was safe,
Secure in the comfort of things known,
Of children born and grown,
Of memories green, of promises made and kept,
Of a love depended on.

My heart lay dying.
I will never know what changed in you,
What I did or did not do,
Why trust was broken, love betrayed
And then indifferent grew.

My heart was numb.
I sleepwalked through the days alone,
Step after step, one by one,
Learning another way to live.
My trust in God was all I owned.

My heart grew whole.
It seemed to take unending pain and time,
God's counsel, line on line.
But how I've learned and how I've grown.
Now peace again is mine.

My heart saw truth.
Though love for you will always live,
And eternal ties survive,
On earth my future elsewhere lies.
I've given all I have to give.

My heart flies free.
I sense once more that feelings can be sown.
I know that God alone
Directs my footsteps on the road.
My heart will find another home.

Blow Out The Candle

Life turns on a dime, doesn't it?
One moment there was world enough
And time.
The next your world grew cold,
And so did mine.

We had so little time, didn't we?
To wonder at our miracle,
Reborn
Again in love and joy,
No more forlorn.

Youth revisited, wasn't it?
A second choice, a second chance,
To see
What we had missed before,
To have, to be.

Did I imagine us-did I?
Your touch, your taste, your smell, your warmth
Were real?
Now in cold earth you lie.
And I? I cannot feel.

About the Poet
Angela Peterson was born during WWII in the north of England. She immigrated with her family to Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1950 and was educated there. She received her degree from the University of London, married, and after the birth of her first three children came to the United States. Five years later the family joined the church. She has been an avid genealogist for over 30 years, and now works as a Professional Accredited English genealogist in Salt Lake City, Utah. She has seven children and so far 23 1/3 grandchildren.

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Jim Richards, Meridian Magazine's Poetry Editor, grew up in Salt Lake City as the fourth child in a family of ten. He spent each summer in Montana, where he developed a deep love for mountains, lakes, and forests and activities such as hiking, waterskiing, and riding motorcycles. He has enjoyed various experiences abroad, including a semester in Jerusalem, a mission to Costa Rica, an excursion through southern Europe, and a term studying theater in London. He completed his B.A. and M.A. in English at BYU, and is currently a doctoral Cambor Fellow in the creative writing program at the University of Houston. His poetry has appeared in Literature and Belief, BYU Studies, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and two sons in Houston, where he serves as second counselor in the bishopric of the Spring Branch Ward.

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