A Poem for a Thursday #319

Stuart Kestenbaum has written six collections of poetry. He has also written a book of essays on craft and community. He was the poet laureate of Maine from 2016 to 2021. Kestenbaum was the director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine, for many years. Ted Kooser said of Kestenbaum’s writing that it contains “heartfelt responses to the privilege of having been given a life.”

It doesn't announce itself or knock
on the door of your heart. Suddenly

it's right behind you,
looking with great pity

at the back of your neck
and your shoulders on which

it spends days placing a burden
and lifting it. Grief arrives

in its own sweet time, sweet
because it lets you know that

you are alive, time because
what you are holding becomes

the only day there is; the sun stops
moving, the sky grows utterly quiet

and impossibly blue. Behind the blue
are the stars we can't see and beyond

the stars either dark or light,
both of which are endless.

Grief Arrives in its Own Time
Stuart Kestenbaum