Grief

It is not easy to be

the one who remains, who remembers.

Like the pain of a missing limb,

a seeker without a lodestar

smells despair rooted in the

rebarbative mold of death.

Emptiness envelops;

entropy rules and

inanitiation prevails. Moving

becomes a series of staying

in place. Brownian motion

accomplishes nothing.

Well-intentioned gestures grate;

the touch of a friend

abrades the flesh.

Breathing becomes a task;

the feldspar

and quartz of grief

hinder breath.

Mourning is unbecoming,

an indulgence.

Take a page from Yeats’s

grave, casting “a cold eye

on life, on death…..

Traveler, pass by.”

How to reassemble life

from salvaged parts of

immortal dreams?

The scent of hope swirls

in the metamorphosis of time

to smooth the jagged contours.

No tectonic shifts reverberate.

Tincture of time and liminal events

chisel apertures of light

through the dark chasm.

While what was lost

is ever present,

we can transcend, maybe conquer,

the existential pain. A stream

of strength forging the way,

animation returns.

Eventually.