Sonnet #40: The loneliness of grief

This week I reside in the loneliness of grief:

flat plains where nothing grows but loss and tears,

the home where we once shared your life (so brief,

so rich with love and joy, so poor in years),

a tiny speck of white in a field of gray,

where visitors come and go like tumbleweed,

drifting through but setting no roots to relieve or delay

the cloud of night that with each hour gains speed,

to hurl again resounding bolts of sorrow

to burn my eyes and split my heart anew,

with visions of the past, and bleak tomorrows,

awash in memories of love, and you.

This, too, shall pass with time, but how shall I spend it?

Must I keep battling despair, or somehow... befriend it?

(for Abra, and for Alex)