October 3, 2017

another elegy

How badly I wanted to extol the morning's couplet of toast, 
the slow drip of Irish butter, the caramel hue a tablespoon of cream
painted my coffee. I awoke almost writing, having gone to bed at the tail end
of a perfect fall day, leaves straight out of a Norman Rockwell. 
The headlines pierced my plans. I bent, wilting, over two squares of bread
and a lukewarm mug, poetry disappearing in the smoke of disbelief.
What to say, now, in the silence that remains after the bullets have struck? 
What shred of grace or beauty still clings to the mouth of this October
and its devastating blue sky? I am out of ideas, but here: Take my shatter
of grief and twine it to yours. Let us swallow this bitterness together.