Follow-on

This morning the poem on Garrison Keilor's Writer's Almanac is "Gone" by Ronald Wallace, from For a Limited Time Only. (c) University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008.

Wallace writes of sorrow, of the pain of the living in the time after a beloved has died, writes of "the mundane / acts that keep you human, / the little rituals that keep complete // numbness at bay." He ends with the line, "And then, the sorrow goes."

Well, yes, it's true. Sort of. My experience is that after the poem's last line, there is a lifetime of follow on. A little like this:

Years After Sorrow

After the loss of a mate,
parent, child—and oh, please
God, spare me the loss of a child—
one stumbles through the house
of routines that keep the children
fed, washed, cuddled, sent to school,
housed, and fed again. Next step, next.
And then, the sorrow goes.

It goes. Then returns
like a cat pouncing
on surprised prey, and now
it is my turn to cower with pain
in this moment, and the fear of pain
how it zings through the nerves
and leaves
one weak with trembling sadness

and now it is also my turn to breathe,
to straighten, square and relax my shoulders
and say, this too, this too
is bearable, and I can
bear it all, feel it all,
carry it all in the huge container
of love that is the core
behind the heart and bellybutton
of my being.
And then the sorrow goes.

It goes. Then returns
like the ebb and flow of tides
and circle of ocean currents
that keeps the world alive,

the sorrow goes.


Look on this not as an addition to the Wallace poem, but as a continuation of the conversation, a follow on, another poem that (hopefully) stands on its own. And look upon it that finally I am brave enough, and audacious enough and willing to speak, finally, even in limited venues, of my own experience of bearing what has been brought to me to bear.

And let's admit that there are many kinds of sorrow. Everyone, every single one, bears sorrow. We do not pass one other being on this planet who does not bear some sorrow. Why not be kind? For in the midst of sorrow, life is also funny, and we laugh, and life does go on.

Why not imagine that all life might be carried in a container of love so huge that to human perception it is unfathomable? Why not organize some small routines to give back small pieces of compassion for self and other that also exists with all the pain and sorrow? Oh, why not!

Let me live free not because I have become pain and sorrow free but because I have found a container that is larger than those, a place that surrounds them, includes them, and also includes so much more. A sunny soon-spring day, for example...