Maya Angelou, RIP

Maya Angelou, RIP
April 4, 1928 - May 28, 2014


"Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating
that all people cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can
introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other,
we may even become friends."

"Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him."

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

"I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life."

"A Woman in harmony with her spirit
is like a river flowing.
She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination
prepared to be herself
and only herself "



"When Great Trees Fall"

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.