Grief

Oh My God. My Dear 

We empaths be like, ‘Oh My God!’
As wave on wave in which to drown
‘The coffin. Oh my God, the crown!’
Come rolling o’er the English sod
With flowers floating on the flod
To strew the rooftops of the town
Oh comfort us with staff and rod
We empaths be like going down

You’re not an empath? Lucky you
We take our hats off to you, doff
Our caps as you would have us do
‘As if you too were servants!’ Scoff
Away. We know why we are here
The coffin. Oh My God. My Dear

© Gail Foster 13th September 2022

‘Today I Mostly Learned About Death’ – a small child at Buckingham Palace, Saturday 10th September 2022, photograph by Gail Foster

Demeter and the Poet

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A sonnet for the Autumn Equinox

*

‘He’s taken her away!’  The woman cried

He sighed, and put aside his poetry

And sat beneath the tree, and she beside

And listened to her grief. ‘Persephone

Has gone to Hades!’  How the woman wept

‘He took her last year, didn’t he?’ he said

‘Here, have a handkerchief’ he said – she kept

On weeping – ‘Look, it’s not as if she’s dead

She’s only sleeping.’  ‘It’s alright for you’

She said, ‘you’re just a poet.  You can write

About how black the berries are, how blue

The sloes, how hazel brown and apple bright

And beautiful it is.’  ‘You don’t look bad

Yourself’ he said.  That poet – what a lad.

*

© Gail Foster 21st September 2018

The Widow At The Well

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A rhyme about love and bereavement and loneliness, inspired by the loss of my computer for nearly a whole day, and dedicated to Chris Greenwood, who kindly mended it for me

*

She finds herself without him, at the dawn

A crumpled crazy angel weeping light

The cord that bound them severed with a bite

A bloodied mewling kitten newly born

He was the sun, that stimulated morn

The moon, that soothed the melancholy night

He was her inspiration, the delight

Of glittered stars upon the heavens drawn

…

She finds herself without him, at the well

A widow weeping willowfalls of tears

Of grief as heavy as a drowning stone

The silence breaks; soft rings a sudden bell

And on the solemn deeps a face appears

That whispers ‘All things come and go alone’

*

© Gail Foster 2016

Blistered

 

Grey days of loss and loneliness are here

Sad nights as long as shadows in the deep

No joy, no hope, no gentleness, no sleep

No ray of light predicted to appear

Just disappointment, emptiness and fear

And sacred dreams discarded in a heap

By some abyss of faith too wide to leap

In ruins lies the love we held so dear

 

Wise folk will say there will be love again

That suns come up, and suns go down, and yet

All I perceive is darkness, drear and grim

All I can feel is searing hurt and pain

My heart, my fingers, too burnt to forget

All blistered, from the flame I hold for him

 

by Gail