https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57322/for-the-fallen

When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse   to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox   when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,   I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?   And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility,   and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular,   and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence,   and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.   When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.   When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real.   I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.   I don't want to end up simply having visited this world
Mary Oliver When Death Comes

She moved on from this world today.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

- Mary Oliver, in “When Death Comes”

FLYING WITH CHAGALL

BY NORA NADJARIAN
In loving memory of a lost friend
After Marc Chagall’s Above the Town (1915)


Silently, cloudlessly, we fly
swimming, legs and arms over
roofs and fields and streetlamps.
We skate over and above a sky
of white, our breath trailing behind us,
around the leaves and their small voices,
like notes of a fiddle.

Oh how – how do you do
it, without falling or slipping
or landing on a green roof
and bruising it blue? No one asks,
but everyone wonders. They all
look into the sky canvas and squint,
and inwardly sigh all day, all night.

It is a dream which only you and I see.
And nobody else.
And nobody else.

Just heard beautiful story read on Selected Shorts; Yancey, by Ann Beatty. This poem is part of the story:

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
By James Wright


Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.


It reminds me of this poem:


Rain
Raymond Carver

Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgiveable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.


And I think this old favorite of mine is related too. This could make for a nice lesson, the three together:

Otherwise
By Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Suddenly
By Yehoshua November

A thousand seagulls rise off the river
behind my classroom.
Facing the back windows,
I watch the birds fly
above my students' heads, which--
turned towards me, or our text,
or their texting--
do not witness the synchronized ascent.
Sometimes, remarkable things happen
inside a classroom
but more often
outside it.

Young and Old

By Charles Kingsley

WHEN all the world is young, lad, 
And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen;
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog his day.

When all the world is old, lad,
And all the trees are brown;
And all the wheels run down:
Creep home, and take your place there,
The spent and maimed among:
You loved when all was young.