There are many versions of this poem; this is the one I heard while on a retreat.
I am standing on the seashore.
A ship sails to the morning breeze and starts for the ocean.
She is an object of beauty and I stand watching her til she fades from the horizon, and someone at my side says, "She is gone!"
Gone where?
Gone from my sight, that is all.
She is just as large in the masts, hull and spars as she was when I saw her, and just as able to bear her load of living freight to its destination.
The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me, not in her; and just at the moment when someone at my side says, "She is gone", there are other who are watching her coming, and other voices take up the glad shout,
"Here she comes".
And that is dying.
This is so beautiful. Thank you, Barbara.