Grief will come very naturally to you, into your living.
It’s how your life is not a movie, the way right timing
and the firm edges of drama will not body forth
your grief like a spotlit Lear at center-stage;
the way it will come ten minutes or a year after
the formally obvious hour, will come
when someone important is on vacation, when someone
(you) has to get the car back from Rocky’s Body Shop.
Then it will be there, the bad news, nudging
into your life like a healthy dog that feels at home
in any house, hoisting its dirty paw among
your thoughts about the breakfast or a foreign film.
ISSUE: Spring 1988