Loss is a place, and you emerge blinking from that den
heart-hungry as a warthog pining for eggs and roots.
I’ll take a new broom and sweep across your back
in the sign of the cross.
It can do no harm.
Tell your beads, say your litany if it helps.
Look forward to the night which will come:
you’ll lift your blind mole face to the sky,
all joy eclipsed, expecting nothing,
and suddenly see Regulus,
bright star, the star that stands in the breast
of the Lion constellation: the Little King.
The dead you mourn would have seen it too.
But now is here,
and when the day grieves this dark
it’s hard to say who rescues whom.
Can a hundred-year folk remedy do it?
I’ll peel ten heads of garlic for you,
mash them with a heavy blade,
throw them into a quart of cognac.
Let it stew and stand, stand and stew.
Drink deeply from this pink etched goblet.
Wash your feet in horseradish tea so hot
your toes scream scarlet.
Flood your dried shriveled organs in green mustard soup.
It’s the happiest memories that flog with thistles.
Thrash yourself with birch branch, as long as it takes,
until new skin grows.
Have more faith: most grievers are powerful diggers,
in time they will claw their way to light.
Bathe cold, breathe clean, forget nothing,
drum and shock yourself awake from stupor
and don’t give up
till all these things be done.
