The Widows' Handbook: Poetic Reflections on Grief and Survival

What will there be

248 the widows’ handbook What will there be Elizabeth Page Roberts What will there be if not poetry in the morning? Will there be trees, like poems, succinctly beautiful, open to interpretation, read for their wisdom, read to wash us clean? What will there be without these questions each new, open day? Will the patterned chaos of shadows on the sun-soaked snow offer a place to wonder? My clouds seem so petty, as the lush ones above move like great white dragons against the cornflower-blue depths of sky. Some russet leaves still hopelessly cling to these abandoned trees. We must be like them, forgetting when a thing is done. When living is done for this one life or that one. We cling to memory like branches as though some thread to resurrection exists. And yet it is simple, Nature’s inexorable dance. coping (more or less) 249 We must float downward from our hold on some hopes and quietly nurture the ground for different growth. ...