Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.
Valerie Bacharach: Crows
Hundreds of crows flaunt their crow-bodies across sky, arabesque
in and out of leafless trees as I walk in the cemetery. Their crow-language shatters,
startles deer and small birds. It’s winter, the solstice done
and still you remain stubbornly dead.
Some days I don’t know what to do with this rage I carry. I snap at your father,
smash a dish on kitchen tiles as grief rampages beneath skin.
The crows settle among graves as if they too are mourning.
We have rituals for mourning; cover mirrors, sit with the bereaved,
recite Mourner’s Kaddish, not a prayer of mourning, but one praising God,
as if God is a Tik Tok star needing constant adoration.
When you died, when opioids destroyed your brain and heart and soul,
when you fell, alone, on a cold motel floor, your father and I died too.
Our bodies still move, our hearts still beat,
but some essential piece of us vanished. At your funeral
the Rabbi tore black ribbons, pinned them above the place our hearts once occupied.
We were to sew them back together after the first month of mourning.
In my wallet, that black ribbon, sewn with scarlet thread. It accompanies me everywhere.
~~~
~~~
Valerie Bacharach’s publications include Last Glimpse (Broadstone Books, 2024). She lives in Pittsburgh.
Poem copyright 2024 Valerie Bacharach
Discover more from Vox Populi
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
So grievously beautiful, this poem. I think of Courtney Love’s album title “Live Through This”–💔
LikeLike
I’m in awe of the courage it takes to write a poem like this. Valerie is brave enough to write about something that’s very distressing to bereaved parents: rage, rage at the fact of the death, and even at the person who died. It occurs all the time, but so rarely do we see a public acknowledgement of it, and in such a beautifully written, heart-rending poem. I am in awe.
LikeLike
Grief is an uncomfortable but constant companion. When my son died years ago I found solace among my friends in Gaza who said, “We are a nation in mourning.” We parents will never fully recover, but what can recovery mean for those who today are losing everyone and everything?
LikeLike
Thanks for sharing this, Mandy.
>
LikeLike
“Our bodies still move, our hearts still beat,
but some essential piece of us vanished.”
oh the truth telling in this poem–through crow language, grief language, that bit of black ribbon sewn with scarlet thread.
thank you.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Grief lives within us but still, we move in this world.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oh, dear Valerie, dear poet, I am weeping with you now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Donna. Your words mean a lot to me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This poem made my tears well up imagining what it would be like. And I looked into a never-ending sinkhole of grief, a hole that would never close. I would just have to walk away from it with time.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you, Rose Mary.
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
This one will stay with me. Thank you for it.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Me too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yesterday was the 14 th anniversary of losing my husband, Fred. This time of year, the crows gathering, the days darker, sadness and comfort.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for sharing this, Barbara.
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hope there are happy memories of him today, and that a key part of him remains in you. Stay strong, dear friend.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Heartrending.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Arlene
LikeLiked by 1 person
So thankful for this poem, but not for the grief which inundates you, Valerie:
but a three part response: 1) for the first time in several years I wept after reading your poem. It somehow reminded me of what my spouse wrote in her journal before she died: “I don’t know if Jim can make it without me.” She was grieving my oncoming grief. But here I am. I wept now remembering she grieved for me. 2) then the poem took me to one of the other of your earlier writings in Vox Populi, an essay called Gratitude Journal…In it I found this phrase: “I live in the borderland of grief and joy….” I will always be in that borderland, and new griefs and new joys come, but for me, the borderland contains hope. Getting to the hope, for me, has taken the proverbial village. 3) in that essay you talked of other birds, rather than the murder of crows: a goldfinch, a murmuration of starlings, the silver sheen in the sun of a red-tailed hawk. Birds as healers then for an earlier grief in your life. My cousin Bruce saved a baby crow, Joe, and raised it. The stories of their bonding bring me so much joy, that even writing this, I have to smile. Though tears will fall again. My hope for you is that joy will come through the cracks, if it hasn’t already started. I hope others will share about this poem, in healing ways,
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks, Jim. I am very moved by this poem each time I read it.
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh thank you for your kind words. To know my words touched you means so much. I’m so sorry for the loss of your wife. I think we learn to live with grief, to remember and hold in our hearts our loved ones. I do have joy in my life, those quick moments when I feel grateful for birds or trees or the taste of a ripe fig. Thank you again.
Valerie
LikeLiked by 2 people