Grief, she thought, permeates
everything, may bind and cast
salt in the shape of a woman.
And what of the backward look?
Shall I not gaze upon
what I love
what I leave
what I lose?
Flesh, she thought, is wasted
on those who flee the God
of their fears
and gone from me now, gone,
but in its place this crystalline
brilliance, and do you
see how I honored
what I loved, how
it touched and
broke me, how
I stood the
burning ground and
would not turn away?
Meditatio Ephemera 
And then there is the staring back in disbelief at the last four years, and what this divide is doing to us all. I’m feeling a bit salty myself…
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You always challenge my mind, Cate. There is so much to this poem, and I am typically not a poem person. To me you have captured well the inconsistency and struggle that so often exists between most religion and basic human nature. … I hope you are well. -Russ
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Thanks, Russ. I’m grateful for your openness to poetry, and the way you receive my poems. It’s sweet to be caught when throwing. 🙂 Wishing you well, too.
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I’ll be pondering this poem for a long time.
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A good thing, I hope. Thanks for reading, old friend.
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Wonderful word picture of loss and grief. This is so relevant to what we are all experiencing now.
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An astute observation. Thank you for reading and commenting!
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