Context: Read this poem and write immediately after your reaction.
Happiness grows back
Like saplings after a forest fire
Barren grief
No longer your primary
residence
That old hollowness
Carved out
Washed
With holy tears
An old topography of loss
You will follow
Back to life
My immediate reaction is, what the fuck?
This was clearly written by someone who maybe is trying to help someone feel better, trying to comfort them, and just doesn’t get it. This poem has some interesting parts to it, ‘barren grief’, in particular is an interesting turn of phrase, but in my experience, grief doesn’t feel barren. It feels like it’s a pregnant moment full of emotions that are ready to explode, particularly in the first days after the event happens.
The mention of ‘holy tears’ is particularly grating. There definitely is a holiness in grief–even for those who don’t subscribe to a religion or spirituality. Something about it feels otherworldly and hoary, and it needs to be honored. But I doubt that’s what they meant by holy tears.
And the ‘old topography of loss’ phrase is a nice one. I like that loss has a topography and a map, and it’s a thing you explore in the first days onward of your grief. But it’s not a map to follow out of grief. Grief is always going to be there. Happiness can be there too, even if our culture has a serious hard on separating the two.
There’s a lot that is trite about it, that feels very much like a greeting card, that doesn’t really help in any situation. It might make the person writing the poem or sending a card with it on it to someone who is grieving, feel better. But in the end, I would be super angry that someone killed a tree for this particular set of words and I would be upset to receive it, because it’s the opposite of what I would need and want.
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