Esspee
Mine is Song by Kath Walker an aboriginal Australian who changed her name to Oodgeroo Noonuccal.
It helped me greatly when I lost my husband to cancer 16 years ago and I have never had another poem affect me in the way that one did.
I recommend you all read it.
Thank you for this recommendation. I didn't know the poem, and have googled. I agree, it is very good.
I struggle to say which is my favourite poem, as so much depends on my mood when I read them.
I do love Prayer, by Carol Ann Duffy, for the way it finds faith in the everyday things that sustain us, and the way we look for something to believe in, even if religion is not for us:
Prayer
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.
But if you ask me tomorrow I would give a different answer