Three

The first time sadness

Is strong enough to weaken

Those levees that restrain our

Tears, desperation may awake

And the wreckage be so fearsome

As to frighten it to stop.

Second sorrow rattles the gates

And what first was torrent now

Becomes a more hypnotic crawl.

And living in the shadow of the dam,

The sense seeps out that this stream

May never break the wall.

But three's a wave that horror cannot cheat.

Three is the bereavement that

Drives summer into fall.

It’s not that the stone has caved,

Or that the deluge fell again, but

That now there is no dam at all.

EJR