looking down
at the grains of
sand
encrusted upon
my tide washed feet

i pause to ponder

how much older,
and far better traveled
these tiny chips of calcified
life and mountain grit must be...

now i have been to
many places....
L.A. Paris, London,
Dunedin, Melbourne
Hong Kong, Mooloolaba
to name but a few...

but these little bits of
seadust,
have lived lives
and lost,
have travelled
to and fro....
becoming ever...
smaller as they went....

shedding of themselves
to the greater entity.
becoming
one speck among......
                              bazillions

taken beyond their lives
of solidity by swirling
currents

only to end up as sand
upon my toes.

It is a fragment floating in the wind, compelled by the magnanimous winds to move in it's spontaneous fashion. Tossed side to side, up and down, forwards and backwards, it's moving so fast it is blurry. Then, as the playful winds stop for a second, it falls.
Falling. On the ground, it lies. I see it and see a piece of trash, huddled up in the corner with the bazillions of crunchy wrinkle textured brown leaves--withering away in decay. Dead. No longer anything to anyone, not even me. Nothing.
I suppose that's the way it's supposed to be.
But the wind--by god, the winds and their shifting moods--gushes back. Shaking the darling buds of May, it roars once more--picking the trash and flinging it in a motion once more. Filing in it's vapid cavity, edifying it with it's passions, pulling it back once more to defy gravity. Pure beauty drawing in, ******* out, taking, giving. Dancing.
Tossed. Up. Down. Left. Right. Around.

Anywhere.
I suppose that's the way it's supposed to be.
I leave it twisting in the wind.

This grief, it won’t leave, it chases me, grabs my ankles,
pulls me to my knees, stalks me during the day,
crawls into bed with me at night,
nudges me if I dare to doze off
quickly reminds me,
I’m alone.

And I reflect on the bazillions of dead humans since the beginning of time, the ancient dead, the war dead, the innocent dead, the dead killed for land, executed on gallows, exterminated in gas chambers, extinguished in death camps, do they await my grief, hide in my bones, live in my heart expectant my dormant grief will find its way to the surface, to respect the lives they once lived?

But I’m a twenty-first century dweller with my postmodern nonchalance intact, moving, using up, basking in the labors of the dead, a sleepwalker on stolen time, gravely in need of self-compassion, dodging the inborn sorrow cut into my heart, while the dead are forgone, they are not forgotten, they form a double square knot no one can help to untie, as their own knots tighten in witness of mine.

Now widowed, my despair dodger foundation shaken, a real life reality lands, no longer a *****, pill popping, *** smoking, TJ Maxx consumer, game plan to avoid sorrow like a plague, the cultural norm, “let the dead, bury the dead,”  no, it’s not happening, why, because my grief never died, sure, it was buried, but it was buried alive, and now the chickens have come home to roost.

~ pe kaplan