Death Book Eleven Ends
We’ve been in the tender and the hard
Of death and children, in the backyard
Where the dog was buried, in the school
Counselor’s office, in the empty fool
Of trying to explain the permanent
To someone who believes the world is bent
Toward life and continuation, to a child
Who can’t believe the world is this wild
Death Book Eleven ends, the children grieve
Death Book Eleven ends, they learn to weave
The loss into the growing and the years
Death Book Eleven ends with a child’s tears
The children carry what we gave them young
The losses that we handed them before the tongue
Could fully form the questions that they needed
The grief that grew alongside, got conceded
Into the architecture of the self
The father-shaped hole on the library shelf
The mother-shaped space in the morning light
The grandparent-shaped absence in the night
But children are resilient in the way
That things are not replaceable but they
Find paths around the damage, they develop
New routes through the territory, develop
Their own emotional vocabulary
Their own language for the loss, the scary
Intimacy they have with grief young
Is not a wound alone, it’s also lung
Capacity, the children who have lost
Know something about value and the cost
Of everything, they don’t take the living
For granted with the same full-throated giving
Of granted that the luckier ones can afford
They know the loss has got a cord
Running through everything, and that’s not
Just damage, that’s also what they’ve got
We’ve been in the tender and the hard
Of death and children, in the backyard
Where the dog was buried, in the school
Counselor’s office, in the empty fool
Of trying to explain the permanent
To someone who believes the world is bent
Toward life and continuation, to a child
Who can’t believe the world is this wild
Death Book Eleven ends, the children grieve
Death Book Eleven ends, they learn to weave
The loss into the growing and the years
Death Book Eleven ends with a child’s tears
The children carry what we gave them young
The losses that we handed them before the tongue
Could fully form the questions that they needed
The grief that grew alongside, got conceded
Into the architecture of the self
The father-shaped hole on the library shelf
The mother-shaped space in the morning light
The grandparent-shaped absence in the night
But children are resilient in the way
That things are not replaceable but they
Find paths around the damage, they develop
New routes through the territory, develop
Their own emotional vocabulary
Their own language for the loss, the scary
Intimacy they have with grief young
Is not a wound alone, it’s also lung
Capacity, the children who have lost
Know something about value and the cost
Of everything, they don’t take the living
For granted with the same full-throated giving
Of granted that the luckier ones can afford
They know the loss has got a cord
Running through everything, and that’s not
Just damage, that’s also what they’ve got