Things to Tell the Grief Counselor
- Things to Tell the Grief Counselor
There’s a hole in the window, jaggedand fresh. It lets in the light,a draft of cold air. What brokethe glass? I see no stone
or child’s ball. I do see a handnot mine poking through. Caution:it’s a young hand. Any handcan bleed. Beyond the glass the sky’s
the pale gray silk of a Whistlernocturne. Waking, I’m like a minerworking a difficult seam of ore.Because I’ve had this dream before.
I remember it when I read Cavafy’s poemabout windows that aren’t there,and why that could be a good thing—to be spared the light. [End Page 43]
Elisabeth Murawski is the author of Zorba’s Daughter, which won the 2010 May Swenson Poetry Award, Moon and Mercury, and two chapbooks. She was a Hawthornden Fellow in 2008. Her work has appeared in The Yale Review, FIELD, Tar River Poetry, Alaska Quarterly Review, and others. She received the 2015 University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize for “Iconic Photo: Lee Miller in Munich, April, 1945.”
