Wake of Echoes

   I stop and start. I type words and delete them all. Words usually matter, but not this week. A child has died and there are no words that will make it untrue.    Tears fall. Days pass and I feel unworthy to shed them. I didn’t really know her. That wasn’t my privilege. Pain is real, God reminds me, even when it has nothing to do with me.    So even though I have no right to mourn, I do not fight my sorrow. I hope it is a result of prayer – that God is easing rightful grief by placing some of it on me.    But platitudes are meaningless. Flowers can’t be spared for language; they are needed for her grave.   She is a light returned to God, but her parents are still here, feeling everything and nothing all at once.  Numbness gives way, sleep is impossible.  When it finally shrouds, it bursts with nightmares – none worse than the reality morning brings. Nourishment seems pointless; when finally taken, it’s swallowed with guil...

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn ... In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home... -- Gloria Douglas Johnson    I love novels; the depth and length that allows me to reside, for a while, in a world far away; the pace that I often feverishly rush, the tone that can fill my insides with heartache, pity or hatred. I can linger in a novel. There, I am gently led to the truths in my heart and then given a soft place to sit and ponder. Revisited, it will show me new surprises, hidden alleys, secret gardens. But poetry is different. It doesn’t allow me to hide within. No lush summer vegetation that produces crates full of nouns and verbs; lexicon bushes, etymological trees. Instead I find a stark copse of winter Aspens, each chosen carefully to cut and sting. Poetry doesn’t meander. There is no sight-seeing along her paths; instead I am led quickly to my own reflection. There she says, “look, see what’s inside.” I...