When Poems Find Me

Sometimes a poem strikes me, and I’m able to write it in the moment. I get an idea for an image, a phrase or a metaphor, and I just can’t help myself.

Other poems are more coy. They want me to write them, but maybe I have too much to say and don’t know how to squish it all down. Or maybe I feel too strongly and the words haven’t quite yet translated.

I’ve been trying to write this poem for about three years now. It surfaces each time I ask my fourth graders to personify an attribute or emotion. I keep wanting to write this poem, but it’s eluded me. It doesn’t help that this assignment comes around the same time of year I lost my brother, and writing about grief while I’m feeling it is…well…messy.

This year, for whatever reason, this incredibly patient poem decided it was time. Enough with the nonsense. Just write already. So I wrote. Here goes:

Grief

I am Grief.
We may not
Yet
Be familiar.
But we will,
Some day.

When we first meet, I am
Everywhere,
Awaiting you in moments
Large and small.
I hold you tight enough
To steal your breath.
Or hide behind a corner
Waiting to spring you
In the off-chance you have forgotten me.

People know me by
That tell-tale dimple on the cheek
That one song that comes on the radio
The telephone call you go to make before realizing
You can’t.

People never consider
How attached I am
To Love.
But there we are,
Always intertwined
As best friends are.

People never consider
I am not one to be escaped
I am not one who should be escaped.
I want to whisper,

Come.
Sit with me.
Let me surround you,
Enfold you.
I am here, yes.
And so is Love.
As you sit,
And as you sink,
You might just fall.

Let us catch you.

-© Lainie Levin, April 2019