A Thousand Tiny Sorrows

Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas

This chair, forgotten, unattended with cane
back weave, worn from steady wear. Once

a table pushed its legs beside the wooden arms.
This weepy tree, abandoned, where the rattlebox

still grows, seeds rest unshaken, leafy buttresses
line the sandstone path, where a boy swung to

and fro with the wind; instinctual as the Sanderline
runs with the ebb and flow of waves. There is

silence between us now, louder than a locomotive.
The mornings are swallowed by the afternoons

and this heart that loved you has fallen
out of tempo. What of that?

Once there was a woman’s name
that swelled inside your inner ear,
the morning when you stood alone
and heard the tulips curve.

   That only moment in your life
   you understood the whole of it,
   everything you’d ever seen,
   even the prattler of crickets.

Maybe you were paranormal;
a freak within your humanness,
but time has tainted everything
so you will never know.

      Perhaps a life can tilt too far
      into the slivered-blue of space
      where galaxies reflect in clouds
      and mirror parts of heaven.

Or maybe you were unaware
that you had been his savior,
all the while you loved him so,
his rag-doll face while deadness wept;

            a fallen tree-
           the silent cry of timber.

Peculiar now the hour has passed
when you became his viaduct,
a shaky bridge morphed into you
your memory bleeds to comatose

      this hazy blackout warps your brain-
      till you were never there.


ISBN 1-59661-131-6
25 pages/$9