Cool prompt, but found it difficult.
When Your Child Dies
You move across an Arthur Murray landscape
letting your body carry you,
in near robotic precision through
the preordained steps of mourning.
He died in spite of your riches, or she because
of your poverty, and all that is left is poverty.
Your words dance ahead, and you will grope
for an image to articulate the unspoken. You will kneel
at the graveside, hold a balloon in your hands
and search for the ephemeral inside.
Does it hold a smirk, or a laugh? It will not hold
your child's soul. It will simply be tied by a string
to your heart and released to the sky
to pull you to your feet, to seed the clouds
of this and every other morning.
When Your Child Dies
You move across an Arthur Murray landscape
letting your body carry you,
in near robotic precision through
the preordained steps of mourning.
He died in spite of your riches, or she because
of your poverty, and all that is left is poverty.
Your words dance ahead, and you will grope
for an image to articulate the unspoken. You will kneel
at the graveside, hold a balloon in your hands
and search for the ephemeral inside.
Does it hold a smirk, or a laugh? It will not hold
your child's soul. It will simply be tied by a string
to your heart and released to the sky
to pull you to your feet, to seed the clouds
of this and every other morning.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.--Jon Anderson