Alan Britt

A Little Poem About Grief
(For Maura Gage Cavell)

Words sometimes seem inadequate in times
of grief, but poems are made of words,
and sometimes they're all we have.

You see, grief hovers above an unmarked grave
like a bleached membrane, or a filament dancing,
tilting left before losing its balance.

Exhausted, it tightens…trembling.

A voice removes its shawl of silk, wool, and salt,
and places the shawl above unmarked bones fast asleep
beneath graphite roots of moonlight digging with picks and shovels,
hoping to reach China, unless, of course,
they’re already in China,
whereupon the sun rises in the East
and sets behind a yellow mountain.

{Poem by Alan Britt}