Category Archives: grief

Eclipse of Light

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It was a solar eclipse
Splashing darkness
Across half the earth
Like a child stretching his blanket
Across the bare
Wood staircase–
Upstairs young man!
His mother admonishes

Never realizing
His life is the smallest
Gossamer thread

From her life to mine

They say
if you try
To look
Directly into the sun
During an eclipse
Seek professional help

Do they mean scientists or
Psychology?

I won’t know.

I just
Know
That staring
Straight into the
Face of God himself
Is impossible hubris
Unless…
The shadow of the Cross
Shields the mortal
Eye

Forgiveness

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Definitions of forgiveness
1. The Man on the Cross bleeding love out in each dying breath
2. The little girl abused until she was five who is so afraid of hell (thanks to Dante Alighieri) who says:

Even though it still hurts
To know what Charles
Did to me
I don’t want him
To go to hell

The pain of it all
Never ebbing
From her beautiful
Face.

The bodies of our dead

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You will say to me
Why are you grieving?
And I will show you the limp form
In my hands

You will ask
What is it?
And I will say
A dead salamander

You will say
They cannot live for long
And I will say
But it had a name–
I cannot say it

And you will ask
What is the big deal?
And I will tell you
Hope.

But what I will not say is that the prone and lifeless
Body of a man
Too easily resembles
This ephemeral creature

The day I spent for him
The last day I spent for him
Looking for a hat
Big enough to cover his fatal
Head injury
Fatal head injury
Never far from mind
The bodies of our dead.

The Rain Dance

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I see the light
Pouring out
Over the lawn at night
The girls in their pretty
Dresses fan out in the lines
Demarcating light and darkness
Can you hear the haunting
Music?
I can
The strings of slow lament
The partygoers
Lurching toward the wrought
Iron gates
Boozy and fatigued
Wondering
who will show us the way home?

Sky

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I ask him
Do you ever want to eat a
Peanut butter sandwich
Not because you are hungry
But because you are
Sad?

Yes. He says
And somehow this helps
Not because he is thin
And I am not
No.
Because the loss
The sandwich cannot heal
Must be faced
Hungry.

Imagine a box

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Imagine a box
A brightly colored box
Like a present/
Like a gift
Something inside of it
Calling you to life
Christmas morning and all your birthdays
It was the birthdays that got me
The little girl alone in the hospital with army issue socks?
Tragic.
Life is tragic.
But we can all use socks…
You taught me to love
And risk myself
be brave child,
You whispered
Open the box.
Treasure inside.
I promise.

Unravel

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Odysseus,

I picture her each night
Her hair, the yarn unravel
All the work of a single day
Woven and unwoven
Like the even exchange
Of breath in and out

Her days are split
Between unwelcome suitors
And reflexively scanning the horizon
For the husband of her youth

Waiting.
Holding the wolves at bay
Unspooling the skein of her work
Making it invisible
To save the idea of a man,

Odysseus.

Eclipse

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The exact wording eludes me–
A search for words
About an eclipse of the sun
Something like
If you want to look directly into the eclipse
Seek professional help

Psychiatric or astronomical?
I wonder
It sticks
As I stagger about
Sunblind like Jocasta
Because I looked directly
At the monstrous darkness
Ringed by blinding light