As I face a significant loss, join me as I get reacquainted with the Dark Angel of Grief: reminding myself what She is, how to relate to Her, and why our culture gets Her all wrong.
I read once that people write poetry to “restabilize a self that has been destabilized by experience.” (The illusory nature of stability notwithstanding, I find this both helpful and true.)
Reading this, I felt like you wrote a poem for the grievers — which is to say, for everyone at one point or another, and even for those like me who even actively fear the prospect of certain kinds of grief. You’ve taken the chaoticness of grief and applied the ordering principles of your (diamond!) mind, honoring and adorning the process with your imagination and beautiful language. In doing so, you’ve created a kind of heroine’s journey specific to grief, one that provides some kind of ground or map for when the carpet has been pulled from under us. A most compassionate reification! It feels profoundly companioning; something to hold onto when disorientation is total. Beautiful and true and profoundly helpful, bravo! I'd welcome more, perhaps a part II on the "new life" that grief ushers in.
I read once that people write poetry to “restabilize a self that has been destabilized by experience.” (The illusory nature of stability notwithstanding, I find this both helpful and true.)
Reading this, I felt like you wrote a poem for the grievers — which is to say, for everyone at one point or another, and even for those like me who even actively fear the prospect of certain kinds of grief. You’ve taken the chaoticness of grief and applied the ordering principles of your (diamond!) mind, honoring and adorning the process with your imagination and beautiful language. In doing so, you’ve created a kind of heroine’s journey specific to grief, one that provides some kind of ground or map for when the carpet has been pulled from under us. A most compassionate reification! It feels profoundly companioning; something to hold onto when disorientation is total. Beautiful and true and profoundly helpful, bravo! I'd welcome more, perhaps a part II on the "new life" that grief ushers in.