I was about to say that grief is best
gotten over. That’s wrong. Do not dread it.
Grief’s not bad, not because such distress
is necessary (though it is), but instead
because grief is how we keep the dead,
how we can postpone that certainty,
like waving at a train. But I’ve lost the thread.
Trains leave little time for waving, and certainly
at least some of the passengers must be planning to return.
It might be best to say that grief—but wait!
I don’t mean grief. Grief is not a noun.
It lacks a noun’s fixity and cultivation.
Grief is verb, active verb, a shouting out—
where is he? what have you done with him? and how?—
and grief’s an asking of the dead—please,
my love, please let me go. And about
that train, it is the living on that train.
And it is the dead who stay behind, and wave.
