how repetitive, how pressing grief can be.
warmth tries to return, but its radiator is faulty. i have to ask for help
again. he sits through another seminar on befriending one’s feelings.
they don’t hold hands anymore. she can’t take the pictures down.
memory rearranges itself into distorted mosaics. the colors
still speak, but the fragments refuse to birth into a form. blue
is a place & red is a time & green is a garish, misguided incarnation.
because loss is universal, i read a short story aloud to my students & cry
when the narrator’s father succumbs to his diagnosis. another died with drawings
of butterflies taped on the wall, probably mid-prayer. pater noster qui non est.
we get on with it, as we do. paperwork & pots of tea & only disappearing
at respectable intervals. but then i see two people kiss at the baggage carousel.
or there’s a birthday, a finisher’s medal, a moonrise, a gifted pair of earrings.
grief is praise because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.
who else is ready to go down into the deep river of the soul & receive
the ceremony? bulrushes stand guard over each elegy’s arrival.
on the anniversary of my latest Great Undoing, i cut a lock of my hair &
leave it on the balcony for the robins to carry off, strand by strand, to build
new nests. i marvel at how repetitive, how pressing living can be.
I love this way of being with grief. Yes, this is the way love is Mande manifest in the world when feel loss has happened. Bless your words and your presence of heart that dives deeply into this fertile territory with such grace.
THANK you! (wings bloom in the shade —phyl)