A Gift For Grief
Some of us have been born here
with a gift for grief.
We have wandered around the earth
unhinged from the joy that surrounded us,
bewildered as to why it was
that our hearts broke when others did not?
Why the wound could never quite heal over?
Why the well of tears would not run dry?
Maybe after an eternity of not knowing
what to do with all our grief,
we have been born at this time on purpose?
So that all that we are losing,
day by day,
the untold magnitude
of all the delicate treasures lost,
will be grieved for,
beautifully and with generosity.
So that the life-giving tears can be received
into the hard dry earth at our end,
and the last of species may hear
the heartbroken ululation of our grief
at their passing.
We might become the tender watch song,
the brave sentinels,
our hearts ablaze
with the depth of our care
and our capacity to let the loss be felt,
and our courage to lay a desperate claim
upon what it is that we have done here,
and to be brave enough to love what is lost
through the sinews of our ravaged hearts.
So that the water and the air
and the fire and the earth
and all the vast council of beings,
will reverberate with the sibilance
of our ancient keening,
not so that we might all be saved
from ourselves after all,
but so that we will die well,
in the knowledge that the Earth’s profound beauty
was seen and known,
loved and cherished.
Maybe in the end,
dying well,
in the presence of love,
in the knowledge that we will be missed,
is all that’s left for us to ask for.
I do not offer this from a place of meanness
or defeat,
but as an opening to purpose and to dignity,
a leaning into the possibility of beauty after all,
however terrible it may also be.
Perhaps there is still time
for a magnificent restitution,
a gracious salvation?
But if not,
when the time comes I hope I will be ready
to grieve as magnificently
as my life has prepared me for.
Words and image “Water Woman” by Lucy Pierce © 2019
No comments:
Post a Comment