Eclipse of the Moon by Mary Susanah Robbins - HTML preview

Grief

I tried to write about it once before,

torpedo tuber of a frozen leave,

grey ice of grief,

and much, much more.

But then it seemed a stranger at the door,

a holder of all fleshly old belief,

a childhood's fief,

time's paramour.

How could so hulking and so hale a thing

or so I thought, bring me a sudden sinking

like a flame thinking?

It could not sing.

It seemed the most the brilliant dark could bring

of all my stuff. I could not hold it, drinking

it, yet winking

at its coming.

How could I see it is like a lined leaf,

fur-lined and limned with wrinkles even more

blown through my door

in the mind's grief?

And yet I knew the winter night was sinking

on winds that fell, and what they sigh or sing

is no live thing

to human thinking.

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