Maya Angelou

My favorite poem of all time is by Maya Angelou, called Elegy:

I lay down in my grave
and watch my children
grow
Proud blooms
above the weeds of death.

Their petals wave
and still nobody
knows the soft black
dirt that is my winding
sheet. The worms, my friends,
yet tunnel holes in
bones and through those
apertures I see the rain.
The sunfelt warmth
now jabs
within my space and
brings me roots of my
children born.

Their seeds must fall
and press beneath
this earth,
and find me where I
wait. My only need to
fertilize their birth.

I lay down in my grave
and watch my children
grow.

I shared this in a writing group one time and most found it dark and depressing. To me it expresses great beauty, as well as the profound truth that each of us has beauty to share in this world, whether it is through bearing children and “fertilizing’ their growth, or whether it is through any other form of creative expression. Creativity is about caring. When we do something with great love and attention, we’re in the creative process. We are being generative. And whenever we’re creating (generating), we are lovingly offering ourselves and our creative products to future life. The whole cycle of nurturing birth and “fertilizing” the next cycle of life is so profoundly beautiful to me.

I’ll end with more wisdom from Maya:

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.

May we all find our songs.