The Course of Grief

This sorrow trips your steps like stones on a path,
always loosening, always falling, preventing a climb.

You will not emerge from her stone chamber. You,
even if you could, would not forget her subterranean voice.

Her bright call will never return, nor will her eyes
open in their sockets. Alone with her gemstones you cry:

emerald, iolite, rings for fingers now ash, for an urn
turned and emptied in the sea, a will like yours.

Show me your tear-scarred eyes, show me your face:
say to me, I was robbed, the best was taken

because one thing was missing, because the time
was a moment too short. Did I lose her I loved

because someone was dull or for no reason at all?
Because some fate failed did I lose my child?

I give you keening, silence, my hands for tears;
I, too, know that stone voice and the chasm of these years.