Make a Feast of Grief

Make a feast of grief,
heap your plate with what you’ve lost.
Salt it all with tears.
The girlfriend you let go
the one who loved you so,
who died of her own hard stone
of sadness never sung.
More, put more on your plate.
Bear to remember how it felt,
when they took away your baby.
Whatever you lament,
lament it well and full
so it sings
inside the marrow of your bones.

Gaze at that plate,
praise what you lost,
weep your gratitude
for being alive to cry
for what you had,
for what was once
alive with you.

For years we let them
take away our grief.
What happened in our heart,
the pressure of repression,
depression, they call it,
mental illness, they call it.
It makes the flatness of your face,
the flatness of your voice.
It purses a a mouth
that’s meant to yowl or laugh.
It freezes brows that want to dance
into deadly lines of stillness.
It makes your plate
of life look empty.

Oh make a feast of grief,
the courses main of grief
and also grief desert.
Taste your depths of sadness
as you never have before.
Jump up from the table.
Rip it away, the restraint
of that straitjacket.
Throw it down on the floor.
Sit again and gaze
at your plate of sorrow,
Feel more grief, undam it more.
Praise what you lost,
grieve what you have
that will be lost.

When you make a feast of grief,
when you sound your weeping,
when you wail
the piercings on your plate,
you join the earthling village.
You make yourself a being human.
One who shows how fiercely much
you love, you you love this life.

with thanks to Martin Prechtel

©Susa Silvermarie 2024