It's Still Life

A Poet’s Thoughts on Grief

I have found grief’s pain remains.
It does not leave. It does not soften.
It evolves.

It ceases to be a personal affront,
a fist shaken at a betraying sky.

It ceases to be a question that demands an answer.

It ages.
It becomes a quality of light.
A longer shadow.
A poetic quality.

We learn to surrender to its grammar,
its strange and non-negotiable syntax.
We stop trying to rewrite the story
and learn to read it aloud
in all its heartbreaking verse.

The intolerable injustice of death
confronts us,
and what seems unbearable
ultimately turns out
not to be unbearable at all.

It is simply life
in its most concentrated, essential form.

Sorrow grows richer.
It deepens. It textures the soul
like frost on a midnight pane,
a beautiful, intricate pattern
made of cold.

It becomes interesting.
It becomes, against all odds,
creative.

And because of its terrible, enduring truth.
I have become the student

and grief,
my most profound instructor.