Wherever You Are Grieving
©2015 by Alice Walker
It does not matter to me:
Wherever you are grieving
Whether Paris, Damascus, Jerusalem, Bamako,
Mexico or Beirut or New York City
My heart, too, is bruised
And dragging.
There used to be such a thing
As melodrama
When feelings could be
Made up,
But now there is bare pain
And sorrow,
A sense of endlessly missed
Opportunities
To smile and embrace
“The other”
Before the change.
We mourn the loss
Of goodness
That was so divinely
Ordinary:
Babyhood
Youth
The blessings of maturity
And of old age.
All sacrificed now
Almost predictably
To the same Greed
Our histories
-Every one of them-
Could have warned us against
If only we knew them.
Alice Walker
Photo taken by: Virginia DeBolt
October 2007
