Poem: Blue and pining

The March wind scours this labyrinth.

Behind it, a few pine trees

sway rigidly against the blue sky.

Often when you walk a labyrinth, someone else is there with you,

but on this one,  I am by myself.

Well, not completely so:

For I follow rows of stones  – smooth and hard like the tops of skulls –

I take them for markers of the dead –

one dead soul after another and after another

making a path of grief.

Between the stones, the path is lined with wood chips

slowly rotting: springy but still stiff with cold.

It’s like walking on frosted flakes.

Here and there, they have blown over the stones.

Hands jammed into my pockets against the cold,

I stop to uncover the rocks with the toe of my shoe,

stubbing until  the shiny surfaces re-appear.

I pause too at the tight constricting corners – this labyrinth is narrower than others.

The long sweeping arcs send me to the centre then away, as usual,

but, at the centre, where you expect the rose,

there is a just a circle,

empty

save for a big rock

slightly off-centre –

a red heart-shaped rock, ventricles down,

unmoving, solid and dead.

So is this the heart of the matter?

Is this a sacred heart?

Will the stones cry out?

Is there no shudder but the wind?

Six months have now gone by since my life’s heart stopped.

I follow grief’s labyrinth,

hoping every day  

that I have reached the centre and can return,

leaving my  cold stone heart behind once and for all.

But I look back and, of course, am turned

to a pillar of salt – too many tears.

L. Harris April 10, 2011