GRIEF
by Stephen Dobyns
Trying to remember you
is like carrying water
in my hands a long distance
across sand. Somewhere people are waiting.
They have drunk nothing for days.
Your name was the food I lived on;
now my mouth is full of dirt and ash.
To say your name was to be surrounded
by feathers and silk; now, reaching out,
I touch glass and barbed wire.
Your name was the thread connecting my life;
now I am fragments on a tailor's floor.
I was dancing when I
learned of your death; may
my feet be severed from my body.
by Stephen Dobyns
Trying to remember you
is like carrying water
in my hands a long distance
across sand. Somewhere people are waiting.
They have drunk nothing for days.
Your name was the food I lived on;
now my mouth is full of dirt and ash.
To say your name was to be surrounded
by feathers and silk; now, reaching out,
I touch glass and barbed wire.
Your name was the thread connecting my life;
now I am fragments on a tailor's floor.
I was dancing when I
learned of your death; may
my feet be severed from my body.
5 comments:
I especially like the typed words of wisdom at the end of your post.
Hope you're enjoying this cooler than normal weather we've been having, Marion! We've fished the past two mornings and it's been wonderful!
But who wrote the bottom one, and is it a response to the top one?
The typed words are on a little oblong dish my younger daughter gave me for Christmas. There's no author on it. xo
I've long considered Stephen Dobyns an interesting poet. He morphs the commonplace into profound. Poems of his I've long enjoyed include: "The Window" and "Getting Up."
The man has a way with words and thought. He surely does.
the last stanza of the poem could be the whole poem and is the whole poem in its way and is too much.))))
xo
erin
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