It's Easy to Grieve

It's easy to grieve at the loss
of strangers. The mother in Pittsburgh,
her son blown into pieces in Baghdad;
the couple on vacation in Portugal,
their daughter kidnapped and then, incredibly,
themselves the prime suspect; the widower
who lost everything ("all my pictures of Alice!")
in the hurricane.

My eyes water when I hear their stories
on a nightly newscast too short to cover
all the personal tragedies in the land.

To grieve for strangers is easy.

Not so easy to look in the mirror
and see, behind the complacent neutrality
of my daily mask, the caravan of failures
that tromps over my soul like boots in dust
dryer than the fossils.

Not so easy to take myself
seriously enough to grieve.

--Charles Deemer