Day after Thanksgiving.

From "A Broken Heart Still Beats: After your Child Dies": an excerpt from "Threnody" by Ralph Waldo Emerson.]

"The South wind brings

Life, sunshine and desire,

But over the dead he has no power,

The lost, the lost he cannot restore;

And looking over the hills, I mourn

The darling who shall not return.

"Now Love and Pride, alas! in vain,

Up and down their glances strain.

The painted sled stands where it stood;

The kennel by the corded wood;

His gathered sticks to stanch the wall

Of the snow-tower, when snow should fall;

The ominous hole he dug in the sand,

And childhood's castles built or planned;

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"But the deep-eyed boy is gone.

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"Was there no star that could be sent,

No watcher in the firmament,

No angel from the countless host

That loiters round the crystal coast,

Could stoop to heal that only child,

Nature's sweet marvel undefiled,

And keep the blossom of the earth,

Which all her harvests were not worth?

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"Covetous death bereaved us all,

To aggrandize one funeral.

The eager fate which carried thee

Took the largest part of me:

For this losing is true dying;

This is lordly man's down-lying,

This his slow but sure reclining,

Star by star his world resigning."

-L (11/26/10)