Forecast by Christine Labich

Christine Labich is a visual artist and poet living in Hampshire County. Her work is the practice of finding spirit-sustaining meaning and magic in ordinary human life and the natural world. She brings a deep appreciation for and desire to illuminate the complexities of being human to all her activities.

Forecast

How to be on the day of death, as the curve crests?
I want to hold my mind
as if it fills a bowl to the brim,
a deep drink that could be given.

Once I thought grief was a box,
delivered to a single address.
You would know if it were yours, layers within layers
scrawled with your name as you unwrap and weep,
as you unwrap and rage or unwrap and sleep.

But it is water without a fixed vessel,
the rain across seven cities and swelling of our cells,
moist spring air carrying sounds of life and loss,
a stream that circulates until all cups runneth over.
There is never a shortage of sadness.

I cannot keep any of this for myself.
So many people I will never know,
anointed and lost without another soul in the room,
and I want to carry each to the river
without spilling a drop.