Exploring Grief: Two Poems

WITH

Who can say when the hard things begin?

Even Babies are born crying a haunted cry.

Troubles of a measure too many.

And though different, they pierce where we are most tender.

Always.

The undoing of our hope;

The nights with no stars

And the days of no beginnings.

Joy loses all direction;
Is absent in the morning.

This is loss,

And numbness the only reprieve.

Find me,

And sit with me in the horror.

Speak compassion with eyes, not tongue.

I am too gaunt to be touched,

Yet I need you near.


Soul Mate

Let me not be your lighthouse;
It can stand so cold against the shore.
Distant.
Mocking with the "not yet"
Of your safe arrival.
And I look too much the hero
I certainly am not.
I'll join you on the makeshift raft,
Lashing lantern to the mast.
When arms grow weak from violent rudder
You'll have the feeble help of my grasp.
And if dashed on the rocks,
At least we go not alone.
For where hope can buoy no more

Love is there still,
Willing to sink

Into the wild sea.

I Will Always Love A River

I will always love a river:

Peaceful and gurgling,

It trips delightfully along

With open invitations

To splash in shallows
With childlike fervor.

"Forget now the moments of thy trouble."

And all is well, inside and out,

Soul alight on feather-wings

Of long past joys and promised futures.

All that haunts is diminished

In the clear, timeless waters.

Find your rest here, dear one.
I know you were born into a new world

Where sorrow embraced unbidden

And the earth swallowed you whole.

You co-slept with grief instead of life;

A heaviness only you can know.

There is healing in a river:

It washes clean a body and soul,

Restoring faith to weary hearts,

Trilling prayers without ceasing

As it trips endlessly along

Toward its chosen sea.

Wilderness People

Wilderness People
 
An exit, a birth, a conviction
Moving forward, blindly at first.
Uncertainty.
Surely after a dark,
Day was unconvincingly bright.
Good to be true, too much sometimes.
Doubt invades, making its corner bed.
Endless questions;
Never answers expected or wished.
Pressing on. Shouldering hard truth,
Stumbling, sliding, descending;
A place where shadows hold highest court.
Too human, cut and bruised by stones,
Reaching, grasping, pleading.
And what is to be found but our own selves
Crying for water, nourishment, community?
Who will break the night
And come crashing in with sunrise, day, warmth?
Waiting for night's end, the dread to vanish,
Yet sun must rise late above mountains
To kiss our blighted hollow.
The light is dearest in the valley, you know,

Where scarcity makes it precious.

So we forge our vigil lamps,
Fueling them with tears.

Suddenly, rising in our midst:

A salvation unexpected.

Ember, flame, bonfire!
Spirit of hope
Leading restless wanderers
Back to table, loaf, vine.

An unfathomable grace

Shared in wonder, surprise, thanksgiving.

Sweet mystery, clothed in goodness;
Beyond grasp, measure, likeness.

We tread a new earth

Where every patch of sod is holy.