grief in all stages & why we need it
i linger in musuems like a ghost, not
of the past or the present, but of some broken
time in between where dejected things go and
i look at the marbled stone statues that a
sculptor’s hands carressed and molded and
shaped with each finger so long ago, my
fingers touch the aged figure and i feel
our hands- sculptor and i- meet in between
loving one and the same thing from different eyes
he loves as creator, i love as an angel, to worship
what i could never begin to breathe life into
we touch the same and share our untranslated grief
and the painting that some manic and lonely man
stroked and curved with a dirty brush is outliving his rotted body
is hung on a bleached wall and stared at by thousands of empty eyes,
a painting that he threw anguish into, that he doubted over
that his own fingernails grew gritty with. and these people
stand around straining to connect with his mind
but how could they when he was out of it
he was out of his mind in order to create this piece,
there was no universal lesson etched into its shapes
no rule or theme to the colors he bled against canvas
but the image of a grieving man that cried without words
i curl into a warm and dark corner of the world
and open an old book, an ancient story that
millions of people have touched and read too
my mouth shaping the words over and over
and i am alone with this world on pages.
an author scribbled these words in a notebook
thinking 'are these the right ones, will they make
it into the real thing? this is a world, heart of my heart'.
he was alone with this world on pages, unaware
that someday another person would enter it and
their lips would whisper the same words as his,
their heart feel the same ache as his own.
i am alone gripping the edges of an ancient book,
we- the author and i- alone and we are alone together.
the character cries on a cliff’s edge, and we sit and watch
him jump, losing what he has lost, knowing what he grieves
my fingers trace an atlas in a history book of old
some thoughtful person’s records, their way of
telling the world how it began and how it grew
he knows the world’s stories of tragedy, success, war
does he know the people behind the numbers? the
hands that picked up guns and shot holes into each other?
are we trying to tell stories with our statues and paint and words
and with every action of our hands, do we beg to be fully known?
a tree grows and falls among a thousand, ocean waves
form and crash without number, without keeping careful
count of the rise and fall of their ageless endless world
what are we that is any different. what we do with our hands
that find ways to love or hate or simply tell a story, is
it any different than the tree that rots in a merciless science.
or the seashells crushed under waves’ weight into grains and
grains of colorless sand. we try to reach through time and space,
to touch each other with what we leave behind of a story
and what would it matter when we are all telling the same one
to rise and fall, to crush and be crushed, to follow inevitable patterns-
we tell the story in our different ways and leave behind the invitation,
‘you understand, will you grieve with me?’