Anxiety: That Pest

Grief Poem

Remembrance 

It is just shy of afternoon

when the grief slams into me

like an aching wave in my abdomen

and a stuck placein my parched throat.

I have not shed many tears

until late one night, the full moon showing,

I awoke, startled, at 2 a.m.and cried out, reaching

not for my father, just passed

but my mother, nine years gone.

My body filled with wracking, heaving sobs,

I stood up blindly, fought my way to the living room

where my husband lay sleeping spread-eagled

on the scratched rust-colored leather couch,

nodding off after a late night’s work.

Drowsily, he enfolded me in his arms.

Sssh, he whispered,

as if he held the wailing infant I once was.  

Night, Awakened: A Poem

Those awful nights –when you’re haunted by a memory, a conflict of the heart, an anxiety dream. We’ve all experienced those nights of tossing and turning, without sleep, that somehow… and wonderfully, pass into lovely days. A poem that digs into and chronicles one of those recent nights for me:

Night, Awakened

by Barbara Boughton 

The door creaks.

I slip out of the bedroom,

where you lie sleeping,

fitfully, under heavy blankets.

3 a.m.  A dangerous time in our little house.

A haunting dream awakens me.

My mind is snared by thoughts of the hidden, shadowy self. 

I sink into the plush brown living room chair,

enshroud myself in grandma’s knitted blanket,

sipping cool white wine,

feeling it course under my tongue.

I remember past slights and buried angers,

the pain we provokedin each other’s hearts,

the way we exposed our weakest places.

I try to recapture the joy of those bright afternoons,

when we hugged and leaned into each other,

laying down balm for our wounds. 

Peering into the darkness,

where the cats, disgruntled, slide by silently,

I wait for the first rays of sunlight,

hours and hours to go

until you awake

the room is filled with warmth,

the smell of tangerines, fresh ground coffee,

the vigorous routine and lively rhythm of the coming day begins. 

Talking about grief

As someone who’s lost both parents to cancer (my father at 79, my mother at 71) I know a little bit about grief. Here’s a poem that talks about the grief I went through after my father’s losing battle with lung cancer, and his death several years ago. I truly felt like an orphan after he died, but somehow I managed to get through it:

Grief Talking

I got through the day

on Xanax and chocolate ice cream sandwiches,

my thoughts whirling,

putting one foot in front of another,

haltingly.

In spite of everything,

I got up and continued on.

I noticed the yellow Mexican marigolds,

bushy from long neglect,

outside my bedroom window,

still turning their faces

upwards for the steady hot-beamed sun.