Grief possesses no blueprints
There is no schematic
For how to remember
Or to forget
While walking the gray path of
All the scattered leaves and ash
Of what was
There is no rhythm
To which you might match your steps
No beat
To keep time
There is only the labored,
Slouching forward,
Whenever one’s strength allows;
Coming and going as it does,
In sloppy, uneven, hot flashes
There is no wrong way to lament
There is no proper sequence
For when to laugh,
To cry or to sleep
There is no cutout pattern
For your sack cloth
No clock chimes,
Letting you know that it is now time
To rend your garments,
To rub dirt in your hair
Anyway, time itself is mourning,
Right alongside you
Put your ear to the clock,
Listen closely…
You will hear it quietly sobbing
But time is only an illusion
And being an illusion,
It can only mean that…
Time…
Is nothing more
Than you
So, like you, time is
Absolutely beside itself with sadness
All formalities have fallen by the wayside
It flops, impotently, like a fish
One that miscalculated its angle,
On the jump for a mosquito;
It has now managed to strand itself,
On a parcel of ground
No idea which way it should
Violently spasm,
That it might get back
Into the good, wet stuff
Time grieves with you,
Throttling too quickly
In this
Grinding clumsily along
In that
Fortunately,
Since time is nothing…
Nothing more than you…
It is always the
Perfect time to do
Whatsoever your
Stunned spirit
Feels like doing
Sleep
Or do not
Eat
Or wait for a while
Wail
Or be silent
Work
Or linger in lethargic stupor
Laugh
Or find joy in nothing
Do whatever is best
Or worst
And the rest will wait
There is no hurry
For, in the end,
There is nothing
That we can do
For the dead
They all wait,
Patiently, quietly…
To be us
And we,
Them
©2021 Kevin Trent Boswell
Photo courtesy of Ekaterina
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