When the raven landed, claws
skittering on the bending bough,
I asked her: sing me a blues song,
pluck some cool jazz on the
broken guitar strings
broken guitar strings
of my heart.
It's so cold this winter. The fresh grave
is bare and forlorn without the softening
cover of grass, and as fast as his mother
places plants and flowers on his grave,
they are stolen, day by day and
week by week.
week by week.
How is it we have lost the "kind"
in humankind? All our puny sorrows*
- and the bereavements beyond measure -
- and the bereavements beyond measure -
were predicted by bad fairies at our birth,
but life was musical enough to dull
the memory for a time.
One grows old
and steeped in loss, then we remember:
life brings us our beloveds, but
there always is a cost.
The italicized words are taken from the book and film about suicide titled "All My Puny Sorrows," by Miriam Toews, a noted Canadian author.
Stunning, Sherry. Each stanza a work of art in itself.
ReplyDeleteThose last two stanzas are the stone truth, Sherry.
ReplyDeleteOh I'm with Shay, those last two stanzas hit hard with truth. Grief is a tough passage, and so many make it harder.
ReplyDeletePeople don't realize that the bereaved will come back and look for flowers they placed on a grave. Maybe because so many flowers are placed by people who immediately rush back to the airport.
ReplyDeleteIn Washington (DC) one buys flowers from the desperate foreign student standing on the corner, so I was taken aback, when I came home and told my Significant Other that something he'd said was a flowers-worthy offense, to hear that "Anybody brings you flowers, you know, got them off a grave." We didn't have a florist for several years, in my town, and as of this year we don't have one again. Few men raise their own flowers. So if that's what women want...horrid, but true. Because they think nobody cares and the flowers are just left to rot.
Oh, pooh, Google. I'm not Anonymous, I'm Pris cilla King.
ReplyDeleteThe raven surely knows how to sing the blues. I can relate to that first stanza. Grief is something we try to work through but, it is so difficult to do.
ReplyDeletepeace my friend
Life brings us our beloveds, but / there always is a cost... how profoundly sad yet true...this poem is heartbreaking, Sherry...our puny sorrows are as big as mountains...
ReplyDeleteWhat a tender and powerful poem - so many images to mirror the feelings and also a sense of wearied knowing - Jae
ReplyDeleteThe heart is music made of love and grief and is composed of both: and the bittersweetness only grows as it ages. No one would wish it, few really embrace it, hardly anyone throws it away. And the music goes on. A heartful poem Sherry.
ReplyDeleteSo sad that people would steal flowers from a grave! How is it that people have become so heartless and hurtful?
ReplyDeleteGrief is rubbed raw with such callous acts as stealing flowers left by the bereaved. The irony of "humankind" is rightly underscored, Sherry. Each of these stanzas strike a recognizable chord of mourning in those who are indeed a part of humankind and recognize the binding ties of humanity's griefs.
ReplyDelete