Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 6,000,000 visitors since 2014 and over 9,000 archived posts.
Judith Sanders: The Farewell
“Picture a staircase,” the hypnotist said. “At the top, a door will open onto a landscape.” You expected an ocean as vast and churning, as your grief. But it was only a little brown glade. Something rustled in the underbrush. A deer. Black-eyed and delicate. It laid its head on your shoulder and wept. “That was your brother, bidding farewell. As you descend, lay some grief on each step.” She was eighty. Since then, others have died. You were never able to find her again. -- For Sharon McDermott
Copyright 2020 Judith Sanders
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Though I’m not sure I understand the fortune teller’s agenda in this poem, the grief working its unpredictable way, is all too real. For the work this poem does with its case of grief, and for my own attempts to study my own grief, it does wonders, better than many poems in the grief poetry anthologies that seem bewildered, rather than moving.
The deer is for me a very powerful grief symbol, perhaps because for my Pam, the deer was the animal she most appreciated, and over the years was noted by her as a sort of kindred spirit. The photo here brings loving memories for me. If deer read poems, I’d apologize to them here for all the bad things we do to them.
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Thank you, Jim, for this moving comment.
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