Garrison is great.

Some days when the Writer's Almanac comes on while I'm driving home, I have to pull over. Garrison Keillor is a force to be awed.

All poetry I read, I have to imagine as spoken in his weighty baritone voice, the gentle inflection, the innate knowing only an English major can understand. Here's a winner I humbly offer; if you can, imagine it coming out of your car speakers in this crisp fall day, the changing leaves skittering across the road...

Grief...

Grief is the total feeling of disorientation.

Grief is lying on the floor,

Sobbing,

when it has never happened to you

in your life before.

Grief is awakening at 5:00 in the morning

with that old newsreel of your child's death running around in your head.

Grief is sitting in a group among friends and feeling

"I cannot tolerate this another minute. I have to get out."

Grief is going to shop, looking at a jar of peanut butter and bursting into tears.

Grief is a total inability to relate to the members of your family

in the way that you would like to.

Grief is many powerful emotions,

totally unknown to you and unexpected

until the death of your child.

BUT

Grief is a cleansing of the non-essential of one's life.

Grief can be an opening to something richer and better.

Grief is like a summer storm

-that horrible crashing and thunder,

clearing the air,

and then one can begin to move forward-

but you have to allow yourself,

and Society has to allow you,

to express your grief.

- Margaret Darte