The sudden recurrence of grief

When I shouldn’t be wasting my time, he is before me
in the funny thing that aches his disappearance all over
again. Now convinced that the closing of my heart
dates to that winter day, along with all the distance
and shell-layers of brittle lacquer, the lack of warmth
in laughter, the need to say again in print it’s not fair
how we each carry in our cells some pain that spreads
dark cold

 

This morning thinking of my dad, not exactly related to but folding in with last night’s reading of W. H. Auden’s “In Memory of W. B. Yeats.” I used three lines from his poem as a kind of word list:
1) He disappeared in the dead of winter
2) The day of his death was a dark cold day.
3) And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,

12 thoughts on “The sudden recurrence of grief”

  1. Jennifer, its four months today that Mom died. And though you wouldn’t think it to be true, your poem does bring comfort.
    And I have wanted to tell you all summer, what a life line your writing has been for me. I seem to have forgotten how to write these past few months so to have your words there… well, its though I might have hope of remembering how to do that again someday.
    I appreciate your beautiful writing so very much.
    Thank you, my friend.
    Kathleen

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  6. So well pulled together. I am wondering about your choice to use a prose style. It occurs to me that there are some emotions too big and wild to be tamed into lines. Of all the big and wild emotions, grief is unquestionably the biggest and wildest.

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