Thoughts on Grief (C.S. Lewis- A Grief Observed)

"I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action, had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on though habit fitting an arrow to the string, then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead thought to H. I set out on one of them.  But now there's an impassable frontierpost across it.  So many roads once; now so many culs de sac.

How often- will it be for always? - how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, 'I never realized my loss till this moment'? The same leg is cut off time after time. The first plunge of the knife into the flesh is felt again and again."

Fallow Field

Day, you are
Heavy-lidded.
Dissolute.
Thinned.
You have spent yourself
With no prize in hand at sun's end.

Arms, they are
Heavy.
Bruised.
Burned. 
We drop silent exhausted bitterness
To the ground
Unnoticed by you
In your frenetic death knell.

We lay down
On thread-bare cots 
Dissolute. 
Holding a seed of Hope
For tomorrow, and tomorrow's morrow.

Praying the field birds
Will not swoop down,
Open-beaked, and carry it away.

J. A. Essbaum- Would Land (excerpt)

And life is thirst,
at best. 

So do not strike me, Heart.
I am, too, tinder.

I'm flammable
as birch bark, even damp.

Ash Wednesday

Gray as Gray.
Black as Black.
Tattered as my soul,
An empty, a hollow rock

Deep, holy, true
Running clean.
My soul, swallowed up in yours

Sinful greedy eyes, in your sockets
"Bore our sorrow" they say
A sickness unto sin

Red as Red
Red as Blood
Coursing through your veins
Now, a fatal donation,
To give the scornful: life

Letter to a Friend

You are not forgotten by God.
I keep you in my prayers
You have been dog-eared for the Divine.
Salvation is returning to your page
That you might taste the Spirit
And recognize his face.
That you would meet me
On Jordan's peaceful shore
When these sorrows and this dimness
Have passed away.

Unexpected Guest

She finds Regret at her table,
An unexpected guest.
She realizes she let the word slip
On the street
He must have overheard
And invited himself for dinner.

Now he sits, undenied
Indefatigable.
With once and future kin.
Strange company
In a setting so intimate.

Wrinkles

Our Wrinkles are the Remains
Of a thousand Days gone by
The wear of Handshakes
Sunshakes
The days spent on
Beaches, highways
More exposed for our times with the moon
We bear our recollections with honor.

Synapse

Pain perceived can persist only for so long
Then it stretches, bends, breaks.
Thus lacerated it wilts,
Flutters down
Numbness following in pain's place
Welcome release,
More lack than presence
And I feel no more.

Untitled

The paper is hard
The pen is cold
Trouble is
I'm never alive with you.

I would never love you if I had to
I only love you because
You are who and what I chose
And now you are all I have