February 17, 2026
Thank you to everyone who shared your beautiful poetry with the sangha.
Earlier this year, Sarah Dōjin Emerson and Charlie Korin Pokorny led an exploration of the Zen tradition of writing death poems at the turning of the new year—reflecting on how we can open up to impermanence and clarify what matters most in our lives. We invited the sangha to write and share their own poems.
We hope you enjoy reading them! You can also revisit last year’s poems here.
Now I leave you
However heart-rending this may be
I bow to every ounce of love and care
In the streams, rivers and oceans between us.
— Charlie
There is sand
where the ocean meets the cliff.
Each grain
as tiny and as vast
as universes.
My life
a grain
awaiting the tide to crash
and recede
sweeping it home to an ocean
of ash.
— Austin Guest
I apologize if I was inconsiderate
may this life be so tender
and our time together a balm
when you stopped breathing
you gifted a soft stillness permeating all direction
how brash the living rush in
logistics payments lunch plans
remember this
— Alex Liebman
The windows of the café are papered over
Now it is the ghost of a café
and I will be a ghost
drinking coffee there
Watch out for hungry ghosts.
What about the ghosts inside me?
My ghosts are not hungry.
They are me.
The flower in the vase
is already dead.
I am also a flower.
The longer I live
the more I remember
The more I remember
the less I live.
— Mimi Rosenfeld
It’s hard to write a death poem
When I want to write a love poem
Maybe they are the same.
— Janou
careening into dawn
on a dead leg, and a dancing leg
for the umpteenth time
a degausser will fool me,
and the ground will be stripped out
but I will know and trust
our gray-neon heart
just a little bit more
— Michelle Perkowski
Farewell to Life
And now this,
buttoning my shirt.
And now this,
a painful conversation.
And now this,
noodle soup.
And now this,
sparrows chattering.
And now this,
silence.
— Lauren Thompson
Loretta
What took so long?
Rushing to lay around and wait.
A fly putters around in my mouth.
— Shel Myers
Dear Baby Inside my Daughter
Today you are the size of a navel orange.
I am the size of a baby elephant.
Approximately.
Tomorrow we will be
grapefruits and sea bass,
storefronts and windowsills,
solar systems and flakes of ash.
You will be a table
and your parents
will be the chairs.
I will be your hair.
— Nancy Kangas