Poems

Yesterday, I posted a photo of a poem on Facebook. My grief hung out like freshly laundered underwear.  There for everyone to see but hoping that no one really looks.

I wasn't hoping for sympathy I just wanted to share a brilliant poem that had made me feel.

After my dad died last year I wrote what I hoped were mildly amusing blogs about grief.  This time has been different. I could only write about birds.  My brain broke. I fought elephants in my sleep and I couldn't even begin the process of grieving; being normally sad that my mum had died.  I told my GP everything that had happened and she told me that it would take at least 9 months if not 2 years.  She didn't say what.  Gestation times, maybe? Humans and elephants. But I had some therapy that I can't recommend enough (will blog about it separately) and now I feel sad. 

It's alright though because it's normal sadness.  It's what you are meant to feel after someone you loved has died.  It's normal.  People die and people you love leave a hole in your heart once they have gone. 

Social media is often full of people's grief.  They post photos and memes which sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable and I worry that grief that is managed quietly is somehow less. 

Maybe I posted the poem picture because it was time to be less quiet.  Time to show that I cared. 

Or maybe I posted it because poems are brilliant.  They speak directly to your heart.  Distilled down to just the most important words, with meaning in the gaps they say everything they need to.  I wish I could say more in the gaps.

I had to buy the book because I picked it up in Waterstones and read the poem about being cast adrift amongst the furniture with no one to tell you off and I cried.   Wendy Cope is a poet that always seems to speak to me in a way that makes me wonder if she is following my life.  The first poem in her Anecdotal Evidence collection explained my need to be with birds.

Evidence

Centuries of English verse

Suggest the selfsame thing:

A negative response is rare

When birds are heard to sing.

What's the use of poetry?

You ask, Well, here's a start:

It's anecdotal evidence.

About the human heart.

The birdsong is healing, the poems are healing. And wait until I tell you about the voodoo magic that is EMDR.