When a friend dies by Marge Piercy
My uncle’s mother passed away last week. She was (great-great, great-) grandmother by blood to many, but also grandmother to so many others as well. She and her husband were great friends of my grandparents (and all four were delighted when my aunt and uncle married, over 50 years ago). She was full of joy and love and the world was lucky to have her for the last 90+ years.
That doesn’t really have a lot to do with this poem, other than that someone dear to me has passed. This one’s been in my file for a while and every time I read it, I feel like my heart has been ripped out. (My kind of poem!)
When a friend dies
By Marge Piercy
When a friend dies
the salmon run no fatter.
The wheat harvest will feed no more bellies.
Nothing is won by endurance
but endurance.
A hunger sucks at the mind
for gone color after the last bronze
chrysanthemum is withered by frost.
A hunger drains the day,
a homely sore gap
after a tooth is pulled,
a red giant gone nova,
an empty place in the sky
sliding down the arch
after Orion in night as wide
as a sleepless staring eye.
When pain and fatigue wrestle
fatigue wins. The eye shuts.
Then the pain rises again at dawn.
At first you can stare at it,
Then it blinds you.
