Today’s Nice Thing: A photo essay of 16 of the most beautiful trees in the world. While the list is rather North America-centric, it’s still a lovely visual break in the middle of the day.

My personal favorite:

[Image description: A photo of a man standing in filtered sunlight between two rows of tall, dark trees. The caption reads “The Dark Hedges in Northern Ireland”, with an image credit for Stephen Emerson at the bottom.]

As the Mourning Mother, Sigyn understands your pain when you grieve. She understands your rage at the unfairness of life, and she understands your desire to strike back, and your impotent fury that there is no real way to do so. Sigyn reminds you to feel your pain, to weep your tears, to let your heart break fully so that you can begin to heal.

Allow yourself to feel the grief, to mourn the loss, to weep and wail and keen. Suppressed grief is dangerous, eating at the heart and soul, darkening your spirit for the remainder of your years.

Mourn, bless, and release; the release includes not only releasing the pain once you have acknowledged it, but also releasing yourself from the cave to rejoin life after the period of mourning, and to live fully each day.

As the Lady of Victory, Sigyn reminds you to persevere, to persist, to keep going. No matter how dark the cave, no matter how many times the bowl fills and must be emptied, no matter how many times you want to cry or scream or collapse in frustration, Sigyn reminds you that you can do this. Whatever it is, you can make it through the darkness, and emerge from the cave victorious, ready to once again be part of your family and community, to live and thrive and create a full, rich life.

May Sigyn bring you comfort in your pain, and help you move through your grief so that you can return to the world stronger in heart and soul, and ready to reconnect with your life and your purpose.

Sigyn Speaks Comfort

by Anastasia Haysler

Listen, Dear One.
Hold my words in your heart.
Know you are safe and loved.
Let your heart fill with peace.

I, who am Mother to the lost,
the sorrowful, the mad;
I am here,
and you are under my protection.

Wrapped in my mantle,
safe within its folds,
You may rest, and
let your mind be at ease,
your heart be at peace,
your soul find rest and comfort.

All is well, Dear One,
and all shall be well.

Things That Cannot Die
~ Paige Riehl

A spoon in a cup of tea.
Letters in yellow envelopes,
the way a hand pushed lines
into the soft paper.
Morning laughter.
A white shirt draped
over her chair.
An open window. The air.
Call of one blackbird.
Silence of another.
November. Summer.
My love for you, I say.
My love for you infinity
times a million, my son says.
Sounds of piano notes
as they rest in treetops.
The road from here to there.
Grief, that floating, lost swan.

My note: This poem fits well with today being Veterans Day.

From ‘A Song for Mankind’ by Nazik al-Mala’ika

Emily Drumsta was, as part of her Q&A with ArabLit Quarterly about Nazik al-Mala’ika’s revolutionary romantic poetry, kind enough to share an excerpt of a poem she’s now working on translating:

From ‘A Song for Mankind’ by Nazik al-Mala’ika

The heaped ruins tell stories heard only by shadows and ghosts.

They tell of songs that once floated among these pillars,
through drawing rooms drowning in warmth and dreams.
They remember cries of delight, drunken lines and melodies
plunging into cavernous pleasures
where beauty’s mystery, reckless youth, the temptation of love
lie sleeping—

Life’s veins have dried up here
All that’s left are tuneless memories.

The heaped ruins tell stories heard only by shadows and ghosts.

They tell of those who returned from the war as remnants,
mere fragments, a handful of wounds
chanting a hymn of death,
filling the air with psalm after chilling psalm—
How years of deprivation cast a shadow
over their eyes, their lips,
the echo of their falling footsteps
filling the air like a death knell
as they sang their canticles of chaos,
their black, funereal songs.

Is there any glimmer of light
behind the ashen secrets of these silent eyes?
Stories of the nights that passed slowly
and the thick, heavy snow?
of a sleepless sadness in the eyes of the watchmen
who kept vigil in the bloody trenches
while night shed snow on their eyelids
and they lost feeling in their feet?

They watched over the catacombs of night,
drunk with insomnia and the promise of victory,
as the sinews of feeling in their memories died
in a cold, naked silence.
They watched over life with a weariness
bitterly twisted, anciently shackled—
a story unfolding in every pair of eyes,
told to a night of restless dust.

And the soldiers who slumbered with the dead,
sleeping on the frozen earth—
Their dreams are nightmares full of fire,
cadavers, savagery and sickness,
till morning returns, and death with its blackened fangs
passes through again, reaping,
leaving nothing behind but the silence of ruins.

Evening is lost to a thousand dawns,
and morning to a thousand nights—
Everything withers and crumbles; nothing remains
but a memory and a shadow.