Poems in Sorrow & Grief

The hallway clock still keeps
its small brown cough at four,
though no one wakes to hear it.

Your coat is on the hook.
I have not moved it.
The wool has gone soft at the cuffs
where your hands went in and out
ten thousand mornings.

In the drawer, your glasses
folded the way you left them,
one lens smudged still
with the print of your thumb.

Grief is not the storm.
It is the tap left running
in a room I forget to enter,
the kettle I fill for two
and then remember.

Outside, the snow does what snow does.
It covers the walk.
It does not ask permission.
It does not apologize.

I shovel it anyway,
because the neighbor's boy
has to get to school,
because the salt is there in the bucket,
because the morning is cold
and I am still here
to feel it.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Hear Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –

The clock in the hall coughs once and forgets
what it meant to say. I have learned to keep
your coat on its hook, to let the rain
write its slow will across the glass
and not answer.

Grief is not the flood. It is the drip
behind the plaster, the copper coin
gone green in the pocket of a Sunday suit,
the hinge that complains when the wind
tries the gate. Small accounts. I settle them
each night with a candle stub and a thumb
worn smooth from counting.

You would have laughed—
that laugh like a dropped key—
to see me argue with the kettle,
to hear me bargain with the frost
that feathers the sill. The kettle wins.

In the cemetery the iron angels
keep their rust, their chipped wings,
their patience. They do not offer
consolation. They only stand,
as I stand, in the long grass,
listening for a footstep
that knows the way home
and takes it.