The Smoke Wisps Away Drunkenly Dry

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

Grief’s path is dizziness, a lightning bolt

Of zlowness, zigzag zapped at heart and brain.

You’re left as if you’ve met a lightning jolt

Or are a pig in slaughterhouse’s chain

Just stunned to lessen agony.  You take

Another step and then collapse, but then

You find you cannot find relief.  You shake

Your lover head and so discover men

(All other men) don’t matter.  All around

You others die, but they don’t matter.  They

Are not the one you lost.  Above the ground

Now he is scattered, ashes grim-thin, gray.

  His hair no longer matters.  It is gone;

    Cremation’s death, forbidding any dawn.

©  Phillip Whidden