There is no language of loss,
no poem, no song, no elegy of agony
that does aught but sketch
the barest dimensions
of our experience
Loss is not a place, it does not reside,
not in an empty temple, eager with echoes,
nor some vasty stump-studded waste
that sups on our anguish,
insatiable
It is a state, a condition,
a matrix of broken love
that whirls its knife-edged path
through the essential core
of our soul
It cannot be avoided or removed,
assuaged or denied or avenged
but only borne, suffered, survived,
and accepted by
the bonds of memory
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 