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How can I help you with your grief,
though maybe I shouldn’t even try
if truth be told. There’s no relief
really. Your mother had to die
someday, and how unfit
a man you’d be if you couldn’t make
believe you were tough enough to take it
and move on, how fake
the higher calculus, being
at peace and all that. You’ve lost
her now, few care, and nothing
can help, and no one knows the cost
you’ve paid—but everyone knows
we die like dogs in the deep snow.
“how fake
the higher calculus, being
at peace and all that.”
Perfect and lovely, John.
Litsa, thanks for your comment. That poem is the hard side of the self talking to the gentler side. When my mother died I was filled with grief, of course, but to my surprise I was also filled with rage. Anger at the big cosmic wrong. That’s where the poem came from.
I never know what to say when someone else loses a loved one. I want to rage with them, to tell them it’s wrong, it shouldn’t have happened. Instead it always comes out trite- and not enough.
Love this
“—but everyone knows
we die like dogs in the deep snow.”
Alanna, thanks. I know what you mean. It’s never easy. I could not say to a friend or loved one what I said in that poem. It’s too harsh. I guess that’s why I had to write the poem. In the subways in New York I look around at all the people and think that every single one of them one day will go through the same thing, the loss of a mother or father. Many of them already have. It’s not a unique circumstance. It happens to everyone. But when it happens to you, it feels terribly unique. Some time has to pass before you can feel any solidarity.