Grief Is Another Word For Looking At The Stars

Grief Is Another Word For Looking At The Stars**  February 11, 2013

This place here is my old tree hollow dug out by the rain over many years until, I can curl up and close my eyes or look up at the stars and count the ones with tails. I've been depressed. No, I haven't. I've been so sad it's an ache in my side, like I've run too far, too fast. A dull ache. Certainly not that gnawing in the bowels as if a rat were in my gut and working his way out. It hasn't been a Christ-like pain; I don't credit myself with that. It's a very human sort of stitch in the side. It's the pain of loss. I know it's human because I can name it.

My best friend died. And I know it will lessen with each day; it already has, and thankfully my husband has been patient and caring. I'm old enough to carry a bit of wisdom in myself and know how to recognize the depths of what I feel. When I was younger of course it was more like a puppy's knowledge that something is wrong; but she doesn't know what. A puppy whose been weaned and given to a nice family, but never the less, knows something is wrong, is lacking. And that of course is the puppy's mother. This has that sort of feeling to it.

James was a painter and to begin with, a lousy poet. But I'm a retired poetry teacher and we wrangled backnforth with what sounds good, what is good and how to make what isn't good, better. And it didn't take much. He was so close to the center of what makes a poem a poem that I didn't have to much more than teach him how to tweak his own lines and line breaks and metaphors. We were colleagues.