Sadness

Prismed Prisons. A poem about a wife visiting her husband in prison.

PRISMED PRISONS

She walks down cold, silent paths
Down corridors of steel
Through shackled prison walls
Houses husband to reveal.

Steps soft pace drear distance
Between spouse and spouse
Visiting today from separate lives
Each in a divided house.

His gnarled fingers worn by tests of time
Clasped in tough confusion
Cradles jaws tensed, stern
Views hard bred in seclusion.

“Be not bitter,” she tells her husband
In depression do not dwell
Remember us, your family
Live out your self-made hell.

Your children, poor and lonely
Miss close, warm family ties
Become prisoners real in walls
Unseen to agonize.

Think not that wide walls of freedom
Stand close to imprisoned few
Beyond gray bars, inside steel walls
Outside is a prison too.

– imelda dickinson

Prismed Prison a poem about a wife visiting her husband in prison inmate poetry

This poem is about a woman I saw, who was walking to meet her husband in a prison.

UNSPOKEN WORDS, by Terri Foss

Here’s a beautiful poem by Terri Foss, of Washburn, WI.

Where can I find the words to heal the sadness and the pain that has touched your heart.

When words are not enough to say, my heart will speak in many ways. I believe our lives are as God intended them to be.

Although we don’t understand his ways when times feel so unfair, try to remember God will always be there.

All your loved ones from above will guide you with their love. For someday you will see together you all will be.

Terri Foss

Because I could not stop for Death

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then ’tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.

NOTE:
Emily Dickinson left several versions of this poem.
This is the way it appeared in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Thomas H. Johnson.Â Regrettably, many early editors of Dickinson’s poems dropped the fourth stanza.Â The above poem includes the sometimes missing 4th stanza.