I did not know
what he meant
when he said,
“he has not grieved
as humans grieve.”
But now, I feel
his meaning all throughout me,
all over the place.
Grief has a cadence;
a beating of the wing
with honk,
as the flock moves,
slowly,
a line in the distance,
over the nearby pond.
This character that grieves,
This one inside, he has
his back against the
Stucco wall and his ass
is seated on the marble bench.
The brown leaves blow loudly
about his feet, in the crow-cold
winds and purpling-gray skies.
Only just now has he learned
he will not fall forever into
the pit at his side.
The walls of the pit
fly by him - up, always up -
he grieves.
This one inside has only
Just begun to grieve. In his
Beginning he grieves like
an animal. A howling dog.
Twisting, twirling,
Unleashed, undone
he has no other
place to go but to the den
of tears and ash,
of sweat and blood, down,
down, down
at the bottom of the pit.
In his howling and falling he changes.
Passing through silence into anguish
He emerges someone new.
He is a man now. He has recovered
a bit from the tortured side. He has some
silence in the night. He has some loss.
His eyes, sore from
sobbing, are covered by dark glasses;
his appearance is disheveled and unkempt.
But he sits there, on his bench.
An animal, become a man.
He is different. But he does not say
wiser. He does not believe, anymore,
that the answer is in his hand, or in his
reach, or even out there - at all. He knows
it is a matter of time before the bench
slides over, and again he falls into the pit, and
again he becomes an animal. A man no more.
For now,
until then,
he is a god.
Gods sit in silence,
on their benches,
and they wait.
Gods are what
we are when
we are not animals.
Gods feel and know
something about
the crazy cycles
that keep pushing us
to the edge and
over the edge.
He sits there,
on his ass,
with his sore eyes,
and is a god. For just
a little bit. A god who
wept there, in confusion -
somewhere between
compost and glory.
That is how
a human grieves.
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