Grieving - a cycle of poems
The beautiful cracked cup
“I must have beauty around me!” she declared as I tried to get rid of a colouful cracked cup She clung to beauty, breathed it in Beauty poured out of her as a way of seeing as drops of colour into an old glass bottle so that light would shine through and zing with others on her window sill with the seedpods and picked flowers and tiny plants growing in saucers and recipes cut from a magazine and a feather from a pheasant Lynn, my darling, you could see beauty in the least of things In your world everything mattered everyone could be remade with enough love and beauty You refused to believe that the ugliness in your body could grow and grow and squeeze the life out of you Your body knew it true but mind and soul clung to beauty and cracked cups O Lynn, as you slipped gently over into eternity what glories did you see? My soul’s seeing is blind to the colours and patterns of heaven brilliance But you, you now have beauty all around you! |
Those strange days
My head spins as I remember those days as we ran and spun around the crisis, powerless to evade the calamity, stressed with things to do, people to call, mess to clean, decisions to make, when really there was nothing to do but wait and watch and hold each other and hold her hand and watch her breathe (or not), and wince with her pain and grieve for her smile when it drowned in drugged sleep and hope in vain for one more word, one more touch. Such strange days, those letting go days, holding a space of farewell, being a strange family around that bed, that woman, held by her love for us and our love for her. Oh honey, how I wished for more time but you were gone so soon, in such few days, those strange days. |
Grief is another land
grief is another land
a foreign place
where my passport and currency are not recognized
and I don’t quite know the language
people try to talk to me but it all sounds like chatter and batter
and I politely excuse myself and cover my ears
go looking for a quiet place
to look around me
notice the strangeness of the land
contours which define an absence of her
carved by death, death,
death echoes in the air and hangs as grey mist
the hugeness and the ordinariness of death
grief is another land
a foreign place
where my passport and currency are not recognized
and I don’t quite know the language
people try to talk to me but it all sounds like chatter and batter
and I politely excuse myself and cover my ears
go looking for a quiet place
to look around me
notice the strangeness of the land
contours which define an absence of her
carved by death, death,
death echoes in the air and hangs as grey mist
the hugeness and the ordinariness of death
One tear
One tear escapes and tracks down my cheek I wonder where the rest are. I cannot seem to cry for her who died perhaps I should, I wonder. She neatly boxed and lowered down the flowers fell but no tears with them just this lonely one now and then protests the wrongness of her gone one drop of salt that stings as it heals. |
The Little Sadness
I feel a little sad and it doesn’t go away I feel it in the gaps on the edge of every day a funny little emptiness a whispering of pain an almost close to tearfulness a single drop of rain It’s just you the absence of you It’s really not a problem no need to make a fuss It’s just that now there’s me where there used to be us |
Looking back
As I look back on the month before,
I wonder how I could let so much go.
I had to be so adaptable
letting go of things I wanted, accepting things I didn’t want, didn’t choose
hopes, plans, just dropping them onto concrete to smash
and rushing on, no time to pick up the pieces
come back later, now, with brush and shovel, to gather the brokenness
of what I had wished for …
more time
one more hug
to see her hold her daughter and kiss her and bless her
arguments barely begun and ended by silence
a proper goodbye
As I look back on the month before,
I wonder how I could let so much go.
I had to be so adaptable
letting go of things I wanted, accepting things I didn’t want, didn’t choose
hopes, plans, just dropping them onto concrete to smash
and rushing on, no time to pick up the pieces
come back later, now, with brush and shovel, to gather the brokenness
of what I had wished for …
more time
one more hug
to see her hold her daughter and kiss her and bless her
arguments barely begun and ended by silence
a proper goodbye
Carrying Loss
How will I carry it, this pain? Will I wear it as a gaping wound or tuck it discretely into my breast pocket? Will I shake it in anger at the sky or retreat under it like a big floppy hood? Will it be heavy on my shoulders, a great weight curling me into myself, or as spikes to make others keep their distance? Will I hide inside it, or hide it away inside myself so that no one even notices? I hope it will slowly unravel leaving behind me scraps of coloured cotton, threads of story, crumbs of chocolate, wisps of wool snipped from a sheep, faded wild flowers, tattered photos, remnants of a long friendship over now except for the pain of loss which I must carry a while longer. |
‘Are you ready?’
I’m not sure, Lord if I want to give up my pain for I have become fond of it I kind of like the vacuum suck of it pulling me away from outward work down deep inside somewhere I kind of like the rage of it soundless shout I am in pain! I matter! I need! I kind of like the secret of it a tiger hiding in the grass that only I can see But when his claws tear my skin apart and the rage blocks out all other sound and the pain sucks me too deep too dark I cry ENOUGH Make it stop, Lord! Are you done yet are we there yet? I’m quite sure, Lord Yes now I am “Are you ready?” you ask me Let it go my roaring friend my familiar enemy my pain |