Grief

Grief is the strangest of all human experience in my humble opinion. Time stands still when the precariousness of life hits home. One minute you think you are OK, the next...There are a million decisions to be made. This can be difficult when you continue to be in denial...when you continue to not accept life without your loved one. And from the line of cars following that black limo to the burial park...she was loved by many. Then time speeds up. Knocked into next week I realize I didn't talk to some folks who turned out as much as I would have liked. I did not take care of some things. But everyone took care of me. I am grateful. Thank you to the friend who filled our fridge while we were away. To the family who offered and delivered help with physical labor and solace with offers of spiritual guidance at a surreal time...sincere gratitude and unyielding fidelity.

I composed the following as I rode the subway home from seeing my mother last Mother's Day. My truck still in Florida I rented a car from Manhattan and on the way back from returning it I made these observations. My mother taught me about diversity. Not with words, but with deeds. She taught me tolerance and above all she taught me forgiveness.  I hope all of you can forgive me for my indulgence.

Mother's Day



He stands
at the platform
Edge
To feel a mass of subway
Wind
Sweep by so close
To his chin

Jamming his rap
Into space
Holding the doors in place
For late ones through the gate
No hate
His brand of street love
Rising above sewers and
Who-ers and doers of nasty deeds to others not their brothers
From behind blind thieves of the bright, bringers of night

That's the foe he fights
Right. That's the sight he
Cites. 
No fright but for those who mean harm.
Thems he wants to disarm sound the alarm send them back to the farm.

Subway tunnel loops around with sounds of
Underground city without
Pity

so gritty the white rat and the black rat are both gray in the endless track of night without day saying the say. Playing the play. Avenging the wronged and staying the stay. 450 years ago he was in chains. 450 years later his life has no chance but to perpetuate misery? Now misery has company and brand names and P Diddy. Maybe there is a way up from the steel dust of rails to nowhere laid down and spiked by his Grand Pare from back again to here and there. Down the pike up the junction no moment but for suction in totality of the diction compressed in reduction cannibalized and destabilized as force of history moves beyond mystery and into the realm

    of the unknowable.

   
Mark Ransom