Before the feast,
I slip outside
into the rose glow
of evening and
talk to my loves
who no longer
walk this earth,
and I cry and cry,
and I thank them
for being in my life.
How is it possible
at the same time
to hold so much gratitude
and so much grief?
And the sky holds me
and the rooftops, the
streets and the fields,
the factories and forests,
it holds it all, holds
what is most beautiful,
holds what is most foul.
The sky doesn’t try to change
anything. Like that,
it seems to say
as it turns a deeper
rose. Like that.