Sand and Stars
*Trigger warning: violent death
Our threads, my friends, are plied
with trauma. Granddaughter
plummets horrified to Gorge’s
foot. Son’s spree leaves wife
and daughter dead. Husband’s
plane crashes into Rockies.
My mother survives only ten
days after gun-cleaning accident.
Grief’s loom weaves our plied threads
into one cloth, sand and stars—
that ancient wisdom—our warp
and weft. Sand scatters, reveals
what we would leave unhealed.
Stars guard our dream-starved
nights just as they lit
the psalmists’ thirst for words.
With thanks to Pat Schneider for giving me the courage to tell this part of the story and to Alex McIntosh for the sand and stars.
3 thoughts on "Sand and Stars"
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Beautiful and powerful!
Wow, wow, wow:
weaves our plied threads
into one cloth, sand and stars—
that ancient wisdom—our warp
and weft. Sand scatters, reveals
what we would leave unhealed.
Stars guard our dream-starved
nights just as they lit
the psalmists’ thirst for words.
Nancy, grief is never easy to write about, but you have some beautiful tribute images here. My favorite – “Sand scatters, reveals/what we would leave unhealed.”
My goodness, this is amazing, Nancy. The structure works well–one stanza presenting these happenings concisely, starkly, so that they have more impact, & the other takes up the metaphor of grief as loom/thread & pulls it all together. And I love that last line.