Dena asks me,
“How do you cope with grief?”
and all I can think
of are the licked-clean
broken eggshells
scattered with pinecones
along the path
where I walk my dogs
and of the cacophony
I heard yesterday—
the flapping chaos
as I put the laundry out to dry
a mother bird cried
how wild the pain
how pained the wild
I stood in the sun
the bamboo wind chimes
clinking in time
and then the thought:
the German warplane
found intact on shallow shores of England
yesterday
that millisecond:
I will send this to Dad
who died eight months ago
cancer-beaten
licked-clean
an empty shell
the wild pain of his mother
who at eighty-two only suffers
from bad knees
slow legs
an empty nest
I do not know how
you cope with grief;
I only know it comes
in cacophonies followed by silence—
long pauses to remember
and forget again.
© Julie Bolitho. “Grief,” Poem. The Vein. The Vein press: 2013, online edition found at: http://www.tapthevein.com.
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