Your Grief For What You’ve Lost Holds A Mirror

Wisdom from 13th Century poet Rumi, suitable to read as a funeral poem or eulogy at a loved one’s funeral service.

Your grief for what you’ve lost holds a mirror
Up to where you’re bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look and instead,
Here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
You would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding
The two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
As bird wings.

Share:

More Poems

She Is Gone (He Is Gone)

Popular funeral poem based on a short verse by David Harkins. An uplifting poem about being grateful for a loved one’s life.

Untitled Poem To A Lost Love

A moving funeral poem by Thomas Moore about mourning for a lost loved one, suitable for religious or non-religious services.

Fidele

Funeral poem taken from William Shakespeare’s play ‘Cymbeline’, about a loved one finding peace in the afterlife.

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

The most famous of the ‘metaphysical’ poets, John Donne wrote this poem in 1611, after leaving his wife to travel to the continent. The poem