Describe Your Grief

Tom Hawkins

I am driving a back road

where there are still farms

fenced cattle, tobacco barns,

I can't describe my grief,

unless it's like marching

into a lost war, folding clothes by numbers,

waiting in rank for breakfast

beneath the steamy electric lights

before dawn, crawling in a cave

that hasn't been mapped.

I round a curve and see two birds

flapping in the road.

One has been hit

by a car, and its mate

flutterrs just above,

wild to inspire

its fallen partner's flight.

When Anna was ill,

I would have seen her as the fallen bird,

injured in the road, as I hovered,

watching her struggles,

urging her to fly on broken wings.

But now she is gone,

with our marathon conversations,

her startling questions.

And I don't know

which of those two birds

I am.