Good Grief

 

Since listening to Amanda Gorman read her poem, The Hill We Climb, during President Biden's inauguration, I have been eagerly waiting for her to publish a book with more of her poems. Her book, Call Us What we Carry, was released late last year and I had an opportunity to read it during the holidays.

The poetry focuses intensely on the emotional experience of living through the Covid 19 pandemic. It addresses the fears, stress, and feelings of loss over the last two years. Even those who did not lose loved ones lost the ability to spend time with loved ones and lost the normality of their previous lives.

It is also a book full of hope, recognizing that the experience has changed us in powerful ways. One of my favorites is titled Good Grief and here are a few excerpts:

The hurt is how we know

We are alive & awake;

It clears us for all the exquisite,

Excruciating enormities to come.

We are pierced new by the turning 

Forward.

All that is grave need

Not be a burden, an anguish.

Call it, instead, an anchor,

Grief grounding us in its sea.

We are built up again

By what we 

Build/find/see/say/remember/know.

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