poem and request

[glacierscarving.livejournal.com]

1. HOW DOTH THE LITTLE CROCODILE
   --Lewis Carroll
   
   How doth the little crocodile
   Improve his shining tail,
   And pour the waters of the Nile
   On every golden scale!
   How cheerfully he seems to grin,
   How neatly spreads his claws,
   And welcomes little fishes in,
   With gently smiling jaws!
    
2. My father passed away this Monday and in an hurried attempt to create the funeral service that he deserves before my time up, I am putting together the booklet thing. The funeral director gave me two or three pages of terrible, cliche poems to put on the front of the thing but I looked them over and can't imagine any of them being worth much other than a Hallmark card. So, if you kind people would help me out in my time of need. I am looking for a poem, doesn't matter how long or how short that is about the longing of loved ones, the end of suffering, the afterlife, etc. Thank you. 

Comments

[koralleen.livejournal.com]

I am very sorry for your loss. How about Mary Oliver's Sleeping in the Forest:

I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.