Poem: "The Grief Stone"

Grief can be perfect, you know
Free of the psychic bureaucracies

And twisted compensations

Of mourning and melancholia.

It's a little stone, diamond even,

That lodges at the base of your trachea

And yanks your innards, one and all 

Upwards.

You will never be more human

Or alive

Than when you feel that stone settle

Into its proper place, and call you, 
Sternum and throat,                  

Back to the faces of the dead,

So that you might finally know

Something of this world

With a stone's certainty:

That in the time they were given,

These people were loved.