What to do, what to do...

I hear you say we can use grief --
convert it into energy --
and yes, I've seen it done and know it's true,
and yet the prospect chills me, stills me,
drops me into stasis as I stare into the emptiness
and can't imagine it will ever fill.
That is the challenge, isn't it --
it's not that now is suddenly empty,
it's the prospect of all the empty nows to come
that overwhelms us:
this person, this activity, this place, is gone, and nevermore.
The raven sings his mournful song,
depositing its worm into your ear, relentless dirge of loss,
and still we wake again to face another day
and still the pain we'd hoped might vanish in the night
lingers on, its angry elves
pounding their tiny hammers in our brains and in our veins
in a relentless harsh cacophony there's no way to ignore.

And truth be told--
no day will ever go by now
without that sense of loss,
though it may dim,
and we are carved, formed, modified,
by the shapes our lives will take as they adjust
and then reform around the hole that's left behind.
So shall we bend and slump,
contort ourselves, or lift our grief above our heads
and carry it as a prize or gift
that raises all our efforts to new heights?

The choice is ours, and every day's
a chance to make it yet again,
to lower or to lift; to bend or even break,
or rise again to carry what we've learned
into the light.