private grief

7/28/2019 Private Grief

1/77


2/77

FAMILIAR FACES

PRIVATE GRIEF

Revised 2011 Edition


3/77

Acknowledgments

Poems in this collection also appeared in Active Voice, Alberta

Poetry Yearbook, The Antigonish Review, Ariel, Athanor, The

Blotter, Canadian Literature, Clarity Between Clouds,

Cross-Canada Writers= Quarterly, Descant, Erindale Review,

Exchanges Between Us: More Intergenerational Connections

Germination, The Longship Review, The Malahat Review,

Mamashee, The New Quarterly, Of Cabbages & Kings (6X FM

Radio, London), OSSTF Forum, Other Channels, Parthenon Poetry

Anthology, Pierian Spring, Poetry Canada Review, Prism

International, Quarry, Secrets from the Orange Couch,

sendecki.com, Simcoe Review, Songs from the North, Spare Words,

The Squatchberry Journal, A Tapestry in Six Textures, The Third

Taboo, Tower, Treeline, West Coast Review, Where the Light Waits,

Whetstone, White Wall Review, Wordloom, and Ygdrasil.

Second Digital Edition

ISBN 978-0-920835-38-8Copyright 2011 by Susan Ioannou.

First Digital Edition

ISBN 978-0-920835-26-5

Copyright 2005 by Susan Ioannou.

First Print Edition

ISBN 978-0-920835-01-2Copyright 1986 by Susan Ioannou

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or

otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Wordwrights Canada

www.wordwrights.ca

[email protected]
http://www.wordwrights.ca/http://www.wordwrights.ca/


4/77

Familiar Faces1 Mosaic

2 Editorial

3 A Critics Choice4 Writers:

Collaborators

Rival Poets

A Literary Affair

5 Coffee House Reading

6 First Writing Workshop

7 Chaucer Class8 Dropout

9 Metaphors to My Students

10 Valedictory

11 Daedalus Last Words to Icarus

12 Lake Simcoe with My Father

14 July Beach

15 Welcome16 Couplets for Poet and Pianist

17 Lace

18 Le Misrable

19 Aunty

20 Mary Jane Elder

21 Wire

22 Mrs. Minton Confides23 Convalescent

24 Waves

25 Kathleen Marshall

26 Fast Exit

27 Adjuster, Leaving

28 For My Husband

29 Plaza: Late December30 Giagia

31 The Widows

33 Gathering

34 Eileen and Jean

35 In Your Light

37 In Memory of Sophia Maniates


5/77

Private Grief39 Miserere

49 You Are There41 Elegy

42 Glimpsing the Dark

43 Advance Elegies:

My Mother and Me

Father and I

Faces

45 Somewhere Between47 Reflections, on Hearing a Crow

48 Caw

49 Prayer for Grandma Zoe

50 Four Poems for Greta Ebel:

Last Words

The Angel of Death Visits

InheritancesAt Gretas

55 Last Days

56 Gone

58 Visitation

59 The Funeral

60 Mourner

60 Angelicide61 Memoriam

63 Three Poems for My Father:

When

77th Birthday Dinner

February 1985

66 The Green Room

67 Home Going69 Afterlife

70 Ancestors


6/77

For Merla

. . . without whom . . .


7/77

Familiar Faces / Private Grief/ 1

Familiar Faces

Mosaic

Smiling, among the hanging ferns

she waits, Byzantine.

Icons of singleness

consecrate her walls:a lovers bamboo fan,

two pen-and-inks of Cambridge,

Vogue cover in gilt frame.

Across the evening stillness

Mahler chants.

Brown bandana pillows sinkupon beige velvet as the sofa kneels.

Deep in thick Persian carpet

patterns genuflect,

while glass, gold table legs lift up

old cognac, coral rosebuds

taking communion in a crystal vase.

And smiling, in off-white silk

elegant, elongated,

larger than life

she waits, Byzantine

in a godless age.


8/77


Editorial

Facing blankness at thirty-eight,before her private metal desk

she sits down undismayed.

Four times a day she runs,

drumming awkward lust

into asphalt. Now explains,

sipping iced tea, serene,

how life is pasted to a page,

emotions pencilled blue.

Corrected, corners straight, she disdains

passions smudge,

the ragged right and left of love.

Childless, manless,

fit in efficient solitude,

she edits into black and white

preface, notes and index, but

is void of contents,or a happy ending for herself.


9/77


A Critics Choice

Snake coiled to attack,she shivers black and yellow diamonds

as I read.

Her venom drips.

Will I approve?

Will I condemn?

Or must she strike me firstCin self-defence?

I too am forced to coil,

my prey her strained intent,

forked tongue flicking tact,

and change my speckles brown to green

to suit her mood.

I too must writhe,

intruder on her frightened sands,

play hypnotic games with jewelled eyes,

or slither soundless, serpentine

away towards Eden.


10/77


Writers

1. Collaborators

We keep our work between usC

a bridge and a barrier.

2. Rival Poets

Two itchy bears

rubbing egos

like ragged rumps

against each other

3. A Literary Affair

You make love to me

with your Voice

and I respond

in multiple poems.


11/77


Coffee House Reading

Egos and nerves, poets hunchtight over little tables,

shuffling poems, wondering, When

will I get to read?

Another open set?

I got a bus to catch!

(Really, just want a beer.)

Earless, robots clap

relief as one more ends

and their turn edgesCcloser.


12/77


First Writing Workshop

(for Rose)

A rose by any other name,

you uncurl poems toward the light,

but when sheers snip a twigCit stings!

Green stems bend back.

You want to shoot

thorns into the gardeners palm.

Instead, like rain, you drop and hide

dismayed sap bleeds,

as if you are the only one.

Rose, by many other names,

Ive watched you burstto spread your petals red and wide.

Like mauve, pink, white, already flared,

you want to share

the gardens tint and scent,

match daisies ease, sophisticated iris,the subtle violets whose practised growing

turns shadows into light.

What is a metaphor?

Where rain grows sun,

and past and future root within one moment.

Rose, keep reaching higher.

What briar beauty

awaits your breaking through.

I know. We all dig the same

who garden our passions

among weeds, in words.


13/77


Chaucer Class: a Tale of Middle Age

The Pardoner=s Tale drones on.Across the touching desks,

lolling on the crooks of elbows,

the two stretch closer.

Hands share scribbles on a single paper

to quell the arms from reaching to embrace.

Hes gat-toothed like the Wyf of Bathe

and she a coy Madame Eglantyne,all Amor Vincit Omnia.

They listen for a moment to my drone,

then dream themselves away upon a smile,

the Millers Handy Nicholas and Alisoun

before the flood.

And I, sag-shouldered and distended belly,so very married, middle-aged and stagnant,

ponder the Pardoners words: lust, gluttony and greed.

I miss his ageless sins,

the nights we gorged on kisses till we hurt

and drank ourselves to bed with promises,

every hill and valley of the body plundered

and its pleasures won.

Profane delightCtwenty years ago?

Im not the Merchants January yet,

though May Id long forgotten.

September nudges.

Tumbling leaves curl dry,

though outwardly still golden.


14/77


Dropout

The most important thing in life is money,you insist.

What have I done?

What have I not done

to change your mind?

Where did you learn that whine?

A motto of the toughest school downtown?A mouthful that you swallowed

with the guys while drinking drafts?

Or a back-street hawkers con

barking up your neon night?

Are you prepared for life

or for an overdrawn account?Will forty see you Chairman of the Board

or simply bought?

And ever after

happy? Or instead

threadbare of meaning,

will devalued,breathing hollow in an empty room,

bankrupt when you face internal audit?

Whose words will you quote then?

Or will you smash the next guys dream

and deal him double what you got?


15/77


Metaphors to My Students

One up on youand nearer to myself

(to death still dearer)

Ill rock times ladder.

You down there,

how beautiful you are!

Heed my voice:pull the hours from your ears.

You star-dazzled

climbers of the morning,

you lineless and lucent,

rejoice.

Where you stand

the ascent is long,

so much to gain

(and so much lost)

upon each rung.

You just begin.I am half done.

Hips heavy,

mind wrinkled,

hide thickened,

the hand grips harder.

Few stars in my eyes

when the sun settles down

past four in the afternoon.


16/77

Familiar Faces / Private Grief/10

Valedictory

Dont believe them.Beyond texts and tests,

beyond projects overdue,

beyond 3 1/2 hours nightly recommended study,

beyond no-drinking-at-the-fountain-or-

opening-lockers-until-lunch,

beyond these grey walls

there is joy.

Want

Cso much awaits you.

Reach

and find yourself.

Delight

breath perfumes the body,colours rock the eye,

words break open

music in the mind.

There are three dimensions,

not just pass or fail.

Buds swell into apples.

Caterpillars graduate to rainbows.

Pebbles roar in chorus on the shore,

There is more!

If I could tell you where . . .

Dont believe them.

You don=t need them.

Arc into a clear unknown!


17/77


Daedalus Last Words to Icarus

Love made me push youpast yourself,

out of your lizard skin

off mottled rocks,

squawking at first,

then flapping higher, higher,

nakedness plunging

through the sky.

Invisible to all but me you soared

one with the blue,

sun-bold and swift as light.

I shone along your flaming hair

Cthen watched

mortal explode into infinity.


18/77


19/77


Growing up means swimming alone

or taking a daughter, a son

with me, over the rocksto run for the highest waves

and dive toward our own

beyond.


20/77


21/77


Welcome

Alma & Verne welcome you with their namesswinging from little black chains

on a postcard lawn.

Come on in

a pansy-filled swan

floats at the edge of the walk.

Come on in

wrought iron curls

up white steps to the porch.

Come on in

geraniums nod

over a red window box.

A breeze rushes off the lake.

Waving by hedges, it skips

over the gravelled drive.

Spin-ninn, cut-out geese whirl.

Hee, hee, a lawn squirrel squeaks.Three wooden skunks won=t budge.

Come on home. . . .

Gone down the block,

you hear the pansy-filled swan.

But now a marmalade catbrushing your knee, meows.

CDid Alma & Verne say goodbye?

Only the wind hears them whisper

behind the panes potted fern,

through the lace curtains rustle.


22/77


Couplets for Poet and Pianist

(for a wedding anniversary)

She is the words to his music,

he, the variations on her theme.

Her images lighten his fingers,

his chords ripple her dreams.

She accents his measure,his signature marks her key.

Each honours the thoughtful caesura

between the others beats.

Two movements performed together

shared intricate leitmotifs.

Andante to allegretto

what will the thirds tempo be?

May octaves rhyme into sestets,

and verses sing harmonies,

old lovers creating new couplets

to gracefully play out the years.


23/77


Lace

As winter stiffens quivering hands,gift after gift Thea* Helene crochets:

web-light doilies for her favourites

far away, foreign wife.

Each loop, a moment remembered,

Arachnes straggling fly.

Greek, Canadian interconnectfilaments dainty as pulse.

Whereverchryso mouhergolden onesmoothes

lace on a polished dresser or chair,

Thea Helene takes comfort. Their love

tightens in unsnappable threads.

Across an ocean, fine borders,

two women, day after day, lighten death

* Thea is the Greek word meaning Aunt.


24/77


Le Misrable

He has the desperate certaintyof a man cheated by life:

two canes, arthritic knees,

back a stiff confusion of wires and pins.

Each Friday night at ballet class

the mothers cringe.

Women stir up problemsand men solve em, eh?

He chuckles to the silenced room,

then slashes down his list:

teacher, Frog, Jew-boy, postie, copC

he jabs obliquely some close corner

in each womans life,

setting her lips, thin steel,upon cold rage.

To fight back is futile

Ca screaming tantrum with closed mind.

The women know: theyve watched each other

grind against frustration, bleed.

Upon his groaning metal chairhe reigns absolute, and head braced high,

laughs down their small truths,

sworn deaf and blind.


25/77


Aunty

Every room in her house had its clock.Night after night, she listened to moments

falling between shadows and moon dust

under a smoothed bed.

One morning she felt

the lilacs breathing her in,

breathing and breathing herdizzy from window to window.

Pane after pane she slammed shut.

Shadows resettled in corners and cupboards.

In her drawer, white nightgowns lay down in a row,

white slips not touching white socks.

Never let chaos in.

Never permit

one inch out of place,

not an inch.

Behind glass, ticking

metal hearts spun their hands,watching her watch herself

locked in.


26/77


27/77


Wire

When a mind is a fragile wirethat bends too far, or vibrates

at a frequency higher than calm,

it loses touch with the sun

arcing through noon to night,

and sparks an inside-out universe

where images leap helter-skelter

like cat-and-dog rain crowding the sky,littering unsteady ground.

C follows Z.

1 times 3 equals 9.

Down jumps up, and across

dives somewhere between.

Words nest on unfolded palms,or caw zigzags across the page

to flock, wings pounding, inside the ear.

The right-angle world hums on out there,

lodged in a corner of the eye

or a voice knocking on the wall.

The only password is love,patient enough to pause,

insistent enough to wrench

the mind back

through a lens of frozen stars

to calms other end

right-side up.


28/77


Mrs. Minton Confides

When the Fear comesand hunched into bony shoulders

gnarled hags hiss,

swarming black shawls

over my consciousness,

I sit tight, if I can

remember the cure:

ride out the maelstrom of voices,show nothing, but smile

thinly and nod at

the world through a web.

As long as the old women go

and I awaken to sunlight

wiping ashen streets cleanC

As long as fat walls become straight,

pictures becalmed behind glassC

As long as reality squares

off into three meals a day,

my hands grow fingers from clawsC

I pick my way between heart beats,

serve tea, write letters, mend socks

and arrange graceful clusters of flowers

fresh for my dining room table.


29/77


Convalescent

My last hill remembered,I look at the quiet carnations,

fresh, white as this gleaming breakfast table.

Lighter than yellowed leaves on the wind,

long I had climbed, through thick grass.

Behind me the locked white rooms,

nightgowns cold with sweat,I felt a smooth dappled froglet

spring from the wide, flat stones,

rush me high into joy, and smash

against the leaning cliffs of longing.

Plunging breathless we broke on the water,

splashing too dizzy to waggle

sideways to the edge of calm.

Now silence glows in this space between flowers,

the pull of trees leafing

the empty whiteness of plates.

Orange juice is my sun in a little glass,

the blue napkins silver ring

a piston that moves the sky to spreadacross my lazy horizons lap.

I shall smoke a cigarette,

sift hard pebbles from sand at the rivers bend.

I accept my limitations,

cup water, memory, trees,

kerchunkto none but lost childrenfirm as a white coffee mug,

cling to simplicities.


30/77


31/77


32/77


Fast Exit

Old man Sturdwellhated Gus like blisters.

Dang cat squatted down,

dropped his dark gift

always on the greenest patch of lawn,

like a mongrel, murdered prize begonias,

and ripped the ear near off Sandy,

Sturdwells darlin tiger.

Well, the old man stomped and yelled,

pitched a closetful of boots =n shoes,

strung a dozen cans on Guss tail,

even fired his shotgun illegal.

Nothin scared that animal.

Gus come back, three times a week at least,blackern new gifts and crimes.

One night Sturdwell whooped awake, I got it!

Eyes agleam, he hacked up a hunka fresh liver

and under full moon, in orange striped pyjamas,

he crouched in the dirt, croakin, Here, kitty, kitty.

When Gus snuck up, eager to nip his hand,Sturdwell stuffed him in an onion sack.

Grinnin like a crazy man, in raincoat and slippers

he hiked them half a mile to the CNR yards,

and when no one was lookin,

pitched sack and Gus hard

on a fast freight for Vancouver.

These days Sturdwells got the greenest grass in town.

Begonias took second in Sunday=s garden show.

Sandy sprawls in sunshine,

watchin birds, washin her silk ears,

and Sturdwell grins from sleep as

the 2:00 a.m. express whistles.


33/77


Adjuster, Leaving

My office echoes, a grey boxdusty with privacy.

Against the dark,

filing cabinets lean,

their long, straight drawers gaping.

No more will I sort and assign

their eccentricities:Policy Lapsed

Claim Closed

Beware of Dog

Pulled out

they dream their phantom pages leaf,

flower into a highway of whitecoffee-stained words speed down,

skidding the corners of risk,

burning past settlements,

riderless reinstatements

contesting death.

Slammed back on themselves,their ghostly passions file

Fire, Negligence, Theft

underGCfor Gone.


34/77


35/77


Plaza: Late December

Propped along a plastic benchOld Greek men in black bend

stiff as sticks inward.

Although they clasp each other=s hands,

nod, share gritty laughter,

over snugly knotted scarves the eyes

wait as silent as slow cigarettes.

Around them flows the mall, bright red and green,

snowsuits, parcels, carols flashing

Christmas off wide tinselled walls.

Santa in a plywood sleigh

Ho-Ho-Hos and doles out candy,

cotton his white fantasy for age.

The old Greek men in black chat on,

each within his private winter

needing ask no more if God

exists or Heaven waits.


36/77


Giagia*

From the ominous cornerwhere sofa arm and darkness meet,

fixed against sea green folds of velvet drape,

black crag of chipped and weathered flesh

Giagia through twilight looms.

Her fists are rocks

slung in a shallow valley of taut crepe,skirt overhanging the void

between harsh widow=s knees,

feet flat spits of land

eroded but unmoving in the wave-blue rug.

Solid at base, silent, secure and strong

or so the massive body says.

But in the face

under forever=s mourning band,

pain, fear, bewilderment

flicker like fireflies

to leap out, flames

when no ones in the room

to watch her crumble.

* Giagia (pronounced YAW-yaw) is the Greek word

meaning Grandma.


37/77


The Widows

Pale among damask and flowersDora passed Mavis the teapot

and watched how her bone cup and saucer

balanced on tweed knees.

Dora, stop staring! snapped Mavis.

You look like a mislaid spoon.

Who said the universehad to be paired off?CNo cream.

Dora folded thin hands

tight in her lavender lap.

Forever=s a long time, my dear.

Forever! barked Mavis. Two yearsI mourned Hugh. Thats enough.

Stopped it the morning I met him

smack on my green garden bench.

Sun lit his face gold,

body fleshed as a peach,

not a rack of bones like the end.

Drat that man, he just sat,but I read in his eyes this was it:

Good-bye, Mavis. You=re free.

Gave him my bestCthen got stuck

knitting the nights by myself.

Dora looked past her and sighed.

We were closer than leaves:thirty-nine years, four children,

and one long winter to die.

Cancer cut off both legs.

Pain! My beads begged him dead.

Ever since, nothing seems real.

I hang in shadows. Why go

out? Each footstep echoes.


38/77


39/77


Gathering

Earnest chickens,white permed, spectacled,

six old ladies bob and cluck

round an orange plastic mushroom,

pecking tea from styrofoam.

Their barnyard a suburban mall

(roosters roasted long ago)this hour suns fluorescent bright,

fences straight as glass, and chrome

gate secure that locks them

spindly, darting-eyed

(oh relief) together.


40/77


41/77


In Your Light

(for Grandmother Wright)

Without frame or lens

to freeze this pine-narrowed bay,

you are clear to me still as shallows

glassing over ridged sand

the acid clarity of northern rains.

Years have rippled your skin.Hands like rugged mounts

fist through fishless water,

thrusting cedar and spruce against

skys low, inverted bowl.

Eyes almost transparent,

you root along this rock. Through evergreen shadetwisted feet scramble the slope,

shore to stairway, step to shore,

refilling an emptied pail.

When you ease into the boathouse chair,

pink and mauve pansies

bob under white eaves.

Sunned into morning,your chocolate home sways above water

with love.

A finger begins

curling, uncurling,

a single strand of white hair.

Memorys mainspring unwindsclear as the norths thin light.

It was all forest, then,

clustered thick to the sand,

trees chopped down, one by one,

another rock for the pilings dragged up.

A few feet further each yearthe fiddlehead tangle flattened,


42/77


43/77


In Memory of Sophia Maniates

Be a garbage man if you want to,but be the best that you can,

urged the doctors youngest daughter

from an island of Greeks so stubborn

when a man bit a block of soap

believing it to be cheese,

bubbling, he chewed the rest

to swallow his moneys worth.

SophiaCyour name meant wisdom

enough to teach at nineteen,

enough, when your father passed on,

to shy from Canadas cold.

Sophia also meant yearning:

months you lingered in sunshinewhile over the ocean a young man

waited to make you his own.

Once ringed for life, fine hands

served onion rings in his diner,

circled three childrens misspellings,

kept little fingers in tune.Your family grew, until letters

stiffened fine hands and harder

drove you across deep water

lap after lap every morning,

then to your countrymen,

helping in churches, the courts,where over and over you turned

broken English to Greek.

Not even a numbing stroke

kept them far from your bed.

Sophia, please help us,

many would swallow you still.


44/77


45/77


46/77


47/77


48/77


Advance Elegies

1. My Mother and Me

We watch dead leaves drift

past her kitchen window,

islands of stillness

seaed in childrens chatter ebbing

down the hall.

We sit, stir silence

round bone coffee cups,

mine half full,

hers a drop or two.

Wordless, we drink

comfort from each other.We have faced the waves dark rim

and are agreed:

her ashes to be scattered

among rushes, river stones,

home behind long fields

and for dusts hard return

I, calm now, the one . . .


49/77


50/77


3. Faces

Faces from childhood, nowrutted deeply, gaunt and frail,

snap short-tempered, suffer long

a jaw that trembles,

eyes blank stones, ears hollow.

Such near-skeletons they

totter towards death.

Faces from childhood, then

with careful red lips praised

or arched neat brows

above a manicured warning.

Under mistletoe or a birthday balloon

they flashed down winks from cocktail glasses

while across my innocent skythey gossiped in cigarette clouds.

Blond, red, brunette,

they bobbed spit curls, French braids,

chic amidst olive crepe,

fox and silk shoulder pads.

Wafting Parisian perfume,

air rippled theirExquisite!, Prosit, Mdear.

Our past, mute chiaroscuro,

remembrance two-edged: to face

my guides, my gods,

magnificent mothers friends,

shells that totter towards death

COh, we mourn each other.


51/77


Somewhere Between

Grandmother in mail-order paisley,poured tightly in a rocking chair,

what do you watch in the starched-lace window

passing above geranium leaves?

Johnny, your cousins half-brother

in his high box borne, black soil

heavy for pale city sons,down back roads to a Lutheran plot?

Or Lizzy, a Mennonites daughter,

lent white by the Ladies Aid

to wed the towns wan student-preacher,

springs most parlour-prattled event?

Or children on church stairs playing robbers,

impiety that begs a few stiff switchings

to keep Our Lords afternoon

tranquil for hymns you strain to hear?

Grandmother, what does it mean to your old heart

beating fainter than cedars whispers down on the farmwhere hands never ached from five minutes crocheting

and you read egg prices by candlelight?

Grandmother, what does it come to:

eighty-nine years work, a family of ten

struggling on sausage, potatoes,

hand-stitched clothes and three to a bed?

Old woman, forgotten in helplessness,

leaning on gossips lame housekeeper,

and once a season written by grandchildren

far away, at mothers strict requests,


52/77


53/77


54/77


Caw

Cawa cry sandpapers

fields glassy with sunlight

Caw

a rusty gate

grates on its single hinge

Caw

a pail scrapes

along white stable stones

Caw

rips out a throat

mouse-tufts, bit of bone


55/77


56/77


57/77


2. The Angel of Death Visits

At your little white table, snug by the window,Frau Ebel, I must pull back a vacant chair.

Yes, I will whisper verses from Ringelnatz first.*

. . . Ill give my book a name of my own make,

Use words and spell them any way I care!

Who does not want to read me may forbear . . .

You lean against the past for support,

framed among Solingen watercolours,

crooked streets jutting pink upper storeys

stubborn chins over cobblestones,

like you, refusing to crumble.

. . . He died playing billiards. At his last shot,Seraphim carried him heavenward unto Abram . . .

Indeed, one last time, let us raise

an invisible tumbler ofschnapps,

smiling up from the gold-rimmed photo of Max

sleek as hair crme, brown double-breasted

arm hooking your plump silk waist.In black and white, you are thirty forever;

husband, ashes ten years.

. . . Now youve become brooches and pictures

and rings,

And I have an ashtray thats made from your wings . . .

Admit the old days are gone,

the past is a needlepoint rose,

although, Our Lady of Lace-Doilied-Tables,

you lovingly polish theHummels and Rosenthal vase,

and underneath a starched housedress wear opals

to feather dust from memories crystal.


58/77


59/77


3. Inheritances

Like a clear blue stoneyour memory is set in silver in my house.

Your love embroiders pillows

flowering on my bed,

hangs rushes, reeds, green music

among the quiet frames of watercolour towns

black-inked bridges, lost roads:

an old worldCand you, young.

My mother wraps herself gold and brown

crocheted into afghan affection.

She dreams a pinkfraulein,

daisies, three wine glasses poised,

a river winding deeper through white days.

Along the crystal vase

my sister hears you sing,

ping beneath her fingernails.

You are pearls in her ears.

TheHummelboy stomps homeward,

little basket filling up with dusk.

We all walk that way,

only you have gone before.

The rest of us

watch for signs.


60/77


4. At Gretas

In August,wallpaper roses blue as her eyes

meandered beneath the chandelier

past Hummelfigurines fishing the top glass shelf,

round gold-framed sepia husband, godchildren,

to where we sat by the screen door

and sipped lemonade.

At Christmas,

through the kitchen archway

hair like spun sugar

bobbed above flour-white hands

grating nutmeg, our laughter

into a silver bowl.

On February afternoons,

coffee perked us together.

As sun crept across her sitting-room window

embroidery grew in our laps.

Silver threaded through yellow.

Mauve restitched her years alone.

In June, legs blackened,

mind, a glass shelf layered with dust,

Hummels shattered, a thousand fish mouths. . . .

Without her, I sat and watched.

No moon ever rises from the west.

Darkened roses twist and die.

On the tongue bitter coffee lingers.


61/77


62/77


Gone

(for Doug)

gone

the baldness and boldness of it

the round, shiny, metallic

truth ofgone

stuns like a gong, struck

with blunted love

the numbness ofgone

the forgetting that a familiar

hump in the feel of our world

isnt

the gapingafter a finger snaps

on off

white black

now and for(n)ever

an encyclopaedia

poofed into dustshocking!

in time we forget

a little

(we never recover)

gone

heel before toe

teeters, Earths edge

every year sharper

peering at space

we taste

a black hole


63/77


swallow

unendingand alone

what comforts

the naked moment?

we all face it

in turn

dying, if we reflect,

makes living kinder


64/77


Visitation

By the wall,on overstuffed chairs, they crouch,

two, dark combed and pressed.

Eyes ice,

they nod at each other,

voices skating slow, as if

replaying

shots and penalties

from last night=s hockey game

except thin hands fiddle

empty at the net,

zero, the final score:

. . . to think

that this is all

a human life comes to . . .

Hard words

no one can pass,fatherless at fifteen.


65/77


The Funeral

(for Aunt Mary)

Great comfort flocks from family:

stately birds descend,

aged aunts and uncles of a gnarled tree

spreading far back

across old meadows, mists and umber forests

past remembering.

Sombre they assemble,

softly nodding words of consanguinity,

cluster closer,

bend dark heads

and in a sudden rush of wide black wings

sweep the new-flown spirit to their midst.

Remote she watches

us at graveside weep,

and puzzled as a faded photograph

cocks a sparrow head

in curiosity.


66/77


Mourner

Invisible dark glassescant shut the fright from his eyes.

Fog thins

and under his feet, the edge

reminds

how far, far down

a figure has disappeared.

An aftershock of sparks flies up

singeing his skin,

Cpromises unkept too long:

shes gone.

Angelicide

Wipe wings

off emptied sky.


67/77


68/77


69/77


Three Poems for My Father

1. When

When mowing one ragged row

triumphs over lungs clogged with mucous,

shrinking toward suffocations last thick breath

When climbing four steps exhausts, like Sisyphus stone

grinding down yet another hill of weak muscle,never quite reaching yesterdays open door

When night collapses sleep with choking half-hours,

fumbles across bedside darkness to snatch

one more small round of relief

It is time to relent,look death in the face,

a long-neglected friend

Time to count off diminishing days

with the tattered grace of those who accept

what cannot be changed or brought back

from vanished power and beauty again.

It is time. Have courage.

We watch you curl and fold,

a paper slowly consumed by cold, thick flames

silently, but for the rasping cough

that spits insistence louder and louder

against defeat.

We stand in your thinning shadow,

unable to stop the moons sad, sure rise,

but shaking hands limp at our sides,

here, awkwardly here.


70/77


2.77th Birthday Dinner

The chandelier trembles.Cling to the velvet-flocked walls

holding back death.

Flag down the matre d with a handkerchief napkin,

jab a tarnished fork in the oysterless shell.

Why must bones snap brittle as crusts,

breath sour to lukewarm wine?Send back the overripe camembert.

Rattle your cup at the curdled cream.

Death creeps over the tablecloth nonetheless,

nibbles your fingertips, gnaws on the limp yellow rose.

Demand the bill be tallied again,

no tip on the Absolute, after taxes.Refuse to let the captain pull back your chair.

The dining room closes at midnight.

Stop our clocked hearts if you can.


71/77


3. February 1985

This is the end.Good-bye, good-bye, by degrees.

Slowly you turn away from me,

nod toward the transparent multitudes

clutching no cracked loaves,

no slippery fishes.

They have come to partake of you.

Day by day they press closer,

reaching long quiet arms

to fold you into themselves,

their white calm.

Soon you will fill their invisible eyes.

There are no choices left.Thin and frail you are wedged

deeper into their midst.

This is the end

Cthe slow swallow of memories.


72/77


73/77


Home Going

As spring rushes down grey snowrunning hills to rivulets,

round this weary house worn shutters

sigh and swing out wide.

Sun embraces potted flowers

on rough window sills.

Brightness flaps from curtain lace.Bricks blush, mellow woodwork,

dappled ceilings celebrate:

hatchings, greening orchards.

I too am thankful,

I too have survived

cold brittle to the bone.I too am wild

when buds bump bark

and black field ants

swarm up a crumbling porch.

Beside this house

checkered gingham dreamseased from endless

peeling old potatoes, wiping eggs.

My own, her mother and grandmother

blossomed, ripened, in this earth

now rest. They too felt spring

sun weariness from hearts,

aches from tightened hands.

Each year as hills run wet

I stand and watch

house burst shutters,

sighs spill over grass,

but as sun marries rooms, and joy

hatches, buds, swells fields,


74/77


75/77


Afterlife

When we liebeneath the earth,

children, why weep?

Count

our white crocuses

fingertipping up.


76/77


77/77


- FINIS

private grief

Documents

Complicated Grief

What is Grief and Mourning? What is Anticipatory Grief ...on End-of-life, Anticipatory Grief and Bereavement? Increased isolation – Chronic illness, end-of-life, anticipatory grief

Steps in Grief and Bereavement: A Grief Counselor's Guide

Mindfulness & Grief

Grief and grief reactions

Grief and Bereavement - National PACE Association. Loss, Grief, and... · reactions 2. Normal Grief 6. Common Normal Grief Reactions 7 Emotional Physical Behavioral . Common Normal

20140410 Men Grief Presentation - FINAL › ucs › Mens-Grief-Survey-Handout.pdf · Other Grief Support Group 2.08 On-line grief support community 2.13 Colleagues 2.32 Funeral Director

DEATH & GRIEF

Grief response

Grief & loss

Grief: How to cope with grief and loss, Practical Steps

Animal Grief

Grief therapy

Grief after loss - loss and grief support-Grief Centre 023 Grief after loss_L… · you about your loss, the grief and the changes in your life • Consider joining a support group

Grief Couseling in Your Hour of Grief

Pulic Memory and Private Grief

Grief & Bereavement: A Practical Approach Grief and Bereavement.pdf · ' Ian Anderson Continuing Education Program in End-of-Life Care Introduction to Grief! Grief is the response

An Unrecognised Grief - Carers Victoria unrecognised grief-web.pdf · An Unrecognised Grief – loss and grief ... member or friend may experience loss and grief. Grieving carers

Geriatric Grief Reaction: Grief and Depression in the …...1 Geriatric Grief Reaction: Grief and Depression in the Elderly Clare Hawkins, MD, MSC, FAAFP ACTIVITY DISCLAIMER The material

DISENFRANCHISED GRIEF: Strategies FOR ADDRESSING SAME-SEX Grief Issues

Grief and Bereavement - National PACE Association...•Grief before and impending loss: Anticipatory grief refers to a grief reaction that occurs before an impending loss. Typically,

Disenfranchised Grief

Good Grief

Grief & loss.drjma

Grief, Bereavement, and Coping With Loss (PDQ®)—Health ...€¦ · grief reactions of anticipatory grief, normal or common grief, stage models of normal grief, and complicated

Counseling Grief

Why Choose Unity? Together 2019 Grief Stronger Support ... · Navigating Grief Women’s Luncheon Understanding Grief Why Co seUU niyeU o r r B . Grief Connection Healing Thru the

PRAISE FOR GRIEF COUNSELING AND GRIEF THERAPY

praise for grief counseling and grief therapy - Springer Publishing

Grief and Loss - Utahdsamh.utah.gov/pdf/2016 Trauma Academy/Grief and... · Grief and Loss Defined by Dictionary.com • Grief – keenmentalsufferingordistressoverafflictionor loss;sharpsorrow;painfulregret

Loss, Grief, Dying, and Death Loss, Grief, Dying, and Death

FINDING THE GOOD GRIEF - Powerful Inspirationamybarzach.com/Healing_Your_Grief_Guide.pdf · This Healing Grief Guide is a combination of what I do with my private coaching clients,

Grief Packet

PESI GRIEF SUMMIT: GRIEF AFTER SUICIDE APRIL 30, 2021

Program in Grief Counseling for Certified Grief Counselors