New Poem: Sitting Shiva

I borrowed the title of this poem from the Jewish tradition of a seven-day mourning period following a loved one's death.

We lost Maggie, our beautiful Great Dane, this weekend (I wrote about it at The Masculine Heart). More so than even the deaths of immediate family members, I feel a need to observe a mourning, to hold her loss in my awareness and feel it with as much embodiment as I can muster.

As is generally the case with these things, it is not a good poem, but it is one I need to write, maybe one of many.


Sitting Shiva

we stumble through this silence -
autumn wind howling through the hole
of her sudden absence

we've collected her toys,
keeping only her favorite -
the squeaky sheep

mornings are the worst,
the daily ritual disrupted -
no wet kisses and bad breath
waking us to the sunrise,
never again the wagging tail
nor the "woooo" of her joy
in having all of us awake

now there is only the silence,
the empty space where was her bed,
useless food and water bowls

and it's the silence
piercing our hearts
binding our tongues
leaving us gasping
wondering who
we are without her

and how to take
the next breath
and the next
the next

Tags: poetry, love, grief, death, pets, poems, Maggie, loss, Shiva, mourning