By Anita Tanner
Or right-click here to download the audio file: Virga: The Long Streaks of Grief
Initially it’s a downpour
you fear will never stop,
but it’s cleansing in the sense
that there’s an emptying,
and you reach utter bottom
where the dregs live.
Not that you wear your grief
as a badge of honor which reads,
This is one who suffers,
or that you enumerate the stages
complicit in the process
in effort to reach cease.
Grief is no falling leaf.
What startles is the ongoing streaks,
the virga symptoms: moisture that never
closes the gap between heaven and earth,
water and ice suspended that cannot reach
the ground.
