The Uses of Sorrow

Someone once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.






Thirst, 2006

Heavy

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had His hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel
(brave even among lions),
"It's not the weight you carry

but how you carry it---
books, bricks, grief---
it's all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down."
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth/

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled---
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?



Thirst, 2006

Black Oaks

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,
     or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance
     and comfort.

Not one can manage a single sound, though the blue jays
     carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
     the push of the wind.

But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing
     for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen

and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage
     of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
     little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
     one boot to another---why don't you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists
     of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money,
     I don't even want to come in out of the rain.





West Wind, 1997