when grief is long

 when grief is long
and begins unannounced
while you thought you still had time

and before your love is really gone
you find that you wish
heart-leaved vines would grow
roots in you to be
your mourning glory

showy and seen

 
when grief spans seasons

your cheeks become

sycamore leaves after rain

fine hairs dampened

overstretched, brittle, and melting

into the damp pillow 

of soft, earthy, 

decay

when grief is endless

as the bright shards of winter

you wish you could break

like frozen things do

or freezing does

break everything else

when grief is long

and planted as an inkling

growing into a fear

blossoming into

some thorned, poisonous flower

you find you tend it

unwilling but helpless

you help it grow

and grow

I know you. You don't want these words.

I thought I was writing this for you, but I know you--

you wouldn't want this. You wouldn't be touched

if you could hang around a little while and watch

me tuck a poem in your cold hand even knowing

you're not taking it with you anywhere.

I know you. You'd be offended to think 

that losing you broke anything in me--to think I felt

like I was losing you at all. If you were here, I'd tell you

how destroyed I am at your loss because you were always

the one that I told everything. And you would tell me

that nothing can destroy what God has built. 

If you were here, you'd be touched to see me pray. 

You'd tell me to seek God's face. It would matter to you

to see me strong and courageous. 

And I promise you, I'm trying to be what you would tell me to be

if you were here. So I guess I'm not writing to you

because I know you. You don't want these words.

I guess I'm writing this to tell myself what you would tell me

if you were here.

In retrospect, it is no clean thing

Colloquially, a broken heart

seems like such a clean thing--

a monolith split down the middle,

two neat halves. It's a tragedy

but what else can you expect?

That which is petrified, calcified,

hardened, will split 

under a focused blow. 

Thus it has always been.

But wait--what if your heart

isn't hard? And it isn't--

you hope, you despair, you laugh,

you weep, you love.

You are maybe not soft,

nor pliant. Perhaps you're too old,

too leathered by life for that,

but hard? No. 

Nor do you possess some objet d'art--

a heart of beautiful glass too precious

even to be displayed. Fragile

and locked away. No, not that.

Your heart is courageous. It's more like

a flag or the picture of someone beloved

carried through war--tattered, 

dirt-streaked, torn, mended,

and carried on.

So how does it break?

When fear, then despair,

like an artic blast hits,

your suddenly brittle heart,

frozen and iced over in panic

breaks when the blow comes

but not cleanly. It splinters,

shatters, explodes, leaving you

no choice but to begin a painstaking

picking up, piecing together process,

holding very still and praying

no shockwaves come.

In retrospect, it is no clean thing

when a heart breaks. 

No Such Thing

There's no such thing as hope.
The ocean's choked with soap.

The fish must learn to cope

because there's no such thing as hope.

There's no such thing as love.

Our food just kills the dove.

Don't touch without a glove.

There's no such thing as love.

There's no such thing as dreams.

There's garbage in the streams

and the lakes all turned to steam.

There's no such thing as dreams.

And nothing's getting better.

That's why I wrote this letter.

The girl you knew? Forget her.

Because nothing's getting better.

The Rain

Alone on the road I was walking
today I heard the rain coming

shushing through the distant trees

a full minute before I could see it--

even longer before the first drops

touched my skin.

I'd like to make it into some metaphor

about how we feel grief coming

with some prescient sense that whispers

in preparation for coming days of pain.

Or, alternatively, 

I could feign some hopeful sentiment

about the sun coming out after

the deluge has swept past, as I'm sure

it ultimately, eventually will.

But right now

it's just me, walking alone 

in the rain, trying to decide 

whether it will do any good to run

or if all that's left 

is to let it soak me 

to the bone.