generational love (two)

grandmother edition

Ordinary People, 1980, dir. Robert Redford

Ordinary People
for my grandmother
 
an ocean 
of survivor’s guilt 
attempted sink-plunge 
into swirls of red
bottled missives 
never delivered
and no love

what tore apart 
the ordinary people 
ice thickening over 
a brother lost
you could guess

so too me 
the friend 
I was grieving
the molten pain 
in which I bathed
my incapacity 
beyond the swells
to utter it 

though seldom 
words escaped you
you took me to where 
art spoke for itself
in the ebb and rise 
of one like me 
that our illusive lives 
might somehow echo
reach unlikely shores
let me know 
    I’m not alone

and because you 
sat with me 
in that theatre
following another’s 
tidal journey
to his own drier 
muted headland
    I wasn’t