A Fine Substitute

Poetry is a fine substitute for scripture in any ceremony, especially funerals.  The juice has been wrung out of scripture and I crave juicier reflections of human experience as it relates to the profound and mundane.

Kelly Voelker

Beauty Endures

Without beauty I created comfort

Without beauty I created duty

Without beauty I suffered loss

Without beauty I couldn’t cross

From loss to grief to moving on

I could not grieve but stalled at stoic

I felt the sadness but was heroic

Facilitating links of change and tasks

Why can’t I grieve? I asked

Then one day with nothing to do

I created beauty

Then one day with nothing to hear

I listened to enduring music

Too beautiful to accuse it

Of making me sad

It took beauty to release me glad

Through grief pure and hot

Wondering why some beauty is not

Enduring yet others continue

Before and past beginnings and endings

It matters not what we’ve been through

Beauty endures and soothes the senses

Through the borders, lines and fences.

-Kelly Voelker