I got a lot out of one your messages. I am a not who I think I am. If I was then I would not be where I am today. I am just a traveler, passing through this world in time. When I think of the the universe, galaxies of stars, planets, matter and energy. I feel not as significant as I think I am inside my shell of existence. I feel like I am just a dot. I believe that nothing really escapes life. I mean, when something burns it never goes away. Where could it go? It just changes form from one energy to another. Just like the incomplete burning we see as wood becomes particles of smoke. When something moves or when object hits another, the energy does not escape the universe. It cannot die. It just changes form and goes on forever. I believe the only way to escape reality or the physical world is to be taken to another realm by Higher Power.

Thanks for expanding my mind with your life, Sylvia.

Relentlessly,
Andre

Dear Sylvia,
I worked in home care terminal nursing for 13 years. This old poem was written by a 17 year old kid... and I find his message comforting in an odd way.
I'm another red-headed poet named,
Sylvia :-)


THANATOPSIS
by: William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

O him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;--
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice--Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourish'd thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,
The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,--the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, pour'd round all,
Old Ocean's grey and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest: and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take not of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side
By those who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

"Finally, after Persephone made Spring, I come to honor Sylvia... beautiful woman through and through time/space. Such a sense of humor, such wisdom, such strength, much missed. When I see Spring poppies, I will think of Sylvia in track shoes challenging me to a foot-race through the best of life.

Fly, dear Sylvia!

Jan"

The days of tears and laughter
We found a time to share....
The years have formed a kinship
that’s beautiful and rare.
 
Our hearts were made to coincide
God planned our role on earth
 
By Love -  not through our birth.
 
I love you Sister Sylvie.  May I pass on to others just what you gave so freely to me!!!
 

Debra Ridpath

Coincidentally I met Sylvia the day I quit hospice. She was referred to me by a poet living in England, named Gerald England.  She emailed me that she was a poet, happened to be living in my town and had stage IV liver cancer.  We quickly arranged a meeting.  We met at her favorite hang out, the Starbucks about one fourth mile from her house.  She looked more healthy than most and was a vivacious German beauty.  She was into metaphysics and denial as long as possible.

 

Sylvia quickly introduced me into new age therapies such as Reiki and ancient wisdom written by long hard to pronounce names.  Soon after meeting we recorded our poetry together, did podcasts about poetry and life.  She published a book, In The Garden of Illness, did a book signing at Barnes and Nobles.  I enlisted an artist friend to write a book review which appeared in the El Paso Times. She taught a writing workshop for Tumblewords.  I made a web site for her.  Ironically, she said she had to be dying to feel this alive!

 

For the first six months I knew her she kept a hearty appetite for everything poetic and delicious, then her world lessened. She answered her phone less, ate less and she could no longer tolerate the five minute ride to Starbucks to meet her friends.

 

Sylvia could still be enticed into a phone conversation occasionally, although she started out by saying she was too tired to talk long but would proceed to talk for seventy minutes enthusiastically about the current wisdom she was reading…until the day came that she renounced everything saying that it was all just talk and meant nothing.  We agreed that all the "wisdom" was at best tools for us or just pointers to something not the something itself. These renunciations did not make her hopeless.  She had finally synthesized all that she had read into a wisdom that pointed to herself where she found peace.

 

She began to sleep more.  Morphine and fentanyl were constantly needed and no food was her friend.  The next to the last visit I saw her she laughed about her canes, calling them fashion for the handicapped.  She apologized about her slow speech and her inability to wax poetic. Then she surprised me with a robe jumpsuit like the one she was wearing saying she was giving them to all her friends.  She said she felt like she was being hugged when she wore hers and wanted her friends to feel they were getting a hug from her when they wore theirs.

 

Our last phone conversation she told me she had just returned from a psychic fair to get an aura photo. A five minute ride, fifteen minutes there, five minutes back and she was wiped out.  She was in bed holding her cell phone.  I told her when she needed to sleep to let me know and I would let her go.

She told me for seven years she had gotten an aura photo.  She liked to put them together and compare.  I asked what did the last one show?  Written interpretation: She was at peace and would join the great void soon.  Amazing.  "I have to sleep now," she said.

 

My last visit she lay in bed deep asleep.  Her husband called her name but she did not stir.  I began to stroke her cheek.  She smiled but could not speak or move. Her husband called her name again.  She opened her eyes and stared unfocused for a moment and then closed them.  It was her 47^th birthday.  Silent tears flowed down my face.  I tried hard to keep my voice from wavering. I was disappointed in myself because she was at peace and would not want sadness around her. But grief is an unpredictable weather, a reminder of the temporal delicacy of created things lunging into eternity. I knew this was my last visit.

 

Today I received a phone message that Sylvia died 3-21-08. Another coincidence.  Sylvia was reborn on the first day of Spring with daffodils and purple leaf plums trees blooming in the transitional chill.

 

I wear the gift of Sylvia.  She keeps me warm.

 

Belinda Subraman

A poem for people who never have anything positive to say,and other terrorist minds...

HOPE FOR TOMORROW

 Today, advice echoed
             someone's failure;
"positive attitude"
  took hope away;
gentle lies drowned sunlight,
judgment burned a tongue.

Realistic thinking was soothing
  it's own fear,
pity denied compassion:
"How are you?" made questions
     of tomorrows.
Unsolicited prayer
 damned a God of choice;
volunteering the story of another
  swallowed a soul.

Tomorrow, only the heart will speak.
Hands will touch truth;
eyes will ask for permission
  to be silent, will say:

"Tell me what you need."

 

….ECTOMY

Not able
to endure the hardship
of this barrenness, his mind
wants to break
camp like an early settler
not knowing how
to work the soil,
imaging ripe land
elsewhere.

He knows
she offered up
to the Gods flesh
carrying within potential
to nourish the world
sacrificed
on the alter of stainless steel
to the God of survival.

In the distance
the dawn of his mind
edges up
to the not yet
visible dunes
landscaping his soul.

Faintly sensing the echo
of a Bedouins love song
for his land.

 

ENLIGHTENMENT

I prayed to the Heavens
for a great teacher
dignifying, enlightening and steady.
With desperate pleas,
in silent conveyance,
that I, the student, was ready.

And so the heavens,
obliged to my need,
sent a great teacher
to answer.
When I asked him his name,
he smiled at me warmly,
bowed down to me
and said:

CANCER.

 

 

 

Claims of the finite
by Sylvia S. Thompson
Friday, September 29, 2006 ..

Not so fast Erwin
by Sylvia S. Thompson
Saturday, July 15, 2006

 

INSTA-FAME
by Sylvia S. Thompson
Tuesday, July 11, 2006

DICTIONARY
by Sylvia S. Thompson
Wednesday, July 05, 2006

REFLECTION ON A FUTURE IMAGE
by Sylvia S. Thompson
Wednesday, July 05, 2006

 

Mother-in-law
by Sylvia S. Thompson
Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Renewal
by Sylvia S. Thompson
Wednesday, October 18, 2006