After Mira

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It’s been a year since we lost our beloved dog-child Mira. During this time, we have learned even more about the nature of grief and loss, and how no one is exempt from these tender journeys. This poem speaks to what I’ve learned.

AFTER MIRA

One day, we think we dare to love

but find we’ve already given our heart

and have no choice but to work our fingers

in that unexpected garden. And unimaginable

things grow, through us, within us. However

long the entwining of aliveness lasts, we feel

light and blessed, like the one dragonfly

allowed to light on the one lily pad floating

on the one calm patch of lake. And in some

moment below all we’ve been taught, we

know Heaven is wherever the heart gives

itself away and waits. Then, after what seems

a lifetime and always too soon, what we love

dies or goes away and the tectonic plates on

which our life stands break and heave and

the heart we so freely gave, entangled with

the world, is ripped apart. Nothing makes

sense while in this rearranging pain. Nothing.

Nomatter what others say, nothing is of com-

fort while the heart is reforged in the furnace

no one asks for, as the fire slowly refashions

our eyes. Under it all, some infinite part of

us knows that this too, painful as it is, is the

inexplicable continuance of love: how moun-

tains crumble into valleys, how fires become

the bed of seeds yet to be sown, how lovers

are stilled into their wisdom, how that which

reaches for the stars becomes its own light.

Against our will, our heart is remade by the

angel of grief who fists the center of our life,

shaking everything dead within us from our

branches, until the heart condenses to a

diamond. Hard as this is to endure,

this too is a miracle.

A Question to Walk With: How do you experience loss? Is it impacting you now? What has the ache of loss opened in you?