I was reading a memorial to someone today who requested to be remembered with these words of Robinson Jeffers:
".... death comes and plucks us: we become part of the living earth
And wind and water we so loved..."
I post the whole poem here.
The Shears
A great dawn-color rose widening the petals around her gold eye
Peers day and night in the window. She watches us
Lighting lamps, talking, reading, and the children playing, and the dogs by
the fire,
She watches earnestly, uncomprehending,
As we stare into the world of trees and roses uncomprehending,
There is a great gulf fixed. But even while
I gaze, and the rose at me, my little flower-greedy daughter-in-law
Walks with shears, very blonde and housewifely,
Through the small garden, and suddenly the rose finds herself rootless
in-doors.
Now she is part of the life she watched.
So we: death comes and plucks us: we become part of the living earth
And wind and water we so loved. We are they.