Grieving seldom comes
clean from the bone,
though women who keen
sublimate the mundane
in their terrible song;
but for those such as I
there’s the gangrene
of action elided
and gestures betrayed
into stasis; journeys
deferred, and lines
never spoken, except
in rehearsal
rooms of the brain.
What is not named,
never done, left unsewn
must somehow be pieced
into something I own:
a mendicant gown
or the ghost of a shawl
she once wore as a statement
of undisclosed pain –
Focus of poem:
This poem is from a longer sequence that alludes to the mythology of the mother-daughter relationship as epitomised by Demeter and Persephone.