Cold Solace

Poem by

When my mother died,
one of her honey cakes remained in the freezer.
I couldn’t bear to see it vanish,
so it waited, pardoned,
in its ice cave behind the metal trays
for two more years.

On my forty-first birthday
I chipped it out,
a rectangular resurrection,
hefted the dead weight in my palm.

Before it thawed,
I sawed, with serrated knife,
the thinnest of slices —
Jewish Eucharist.

The amber squares
with their translucent panes of walnuts
tasted — even toasted — of freezer,
of frost,
a raisined delicacy delivered up
from a deli in the underworld.

I yearned to recall life, not death —
the still body in her pink nightgown on the bed,
how I lay in the shallow cradle of the scattered sheets
after they took it away,
inhaling her scent one last time.

I close my eyes, savor a wafer of
sacred cake on my tongue and
try to taste my mother, to discern
the message she baked in these loaves
when she was too ill to eat them:

I love you.
It will end.
Leave something of sweetness
and substance
in the mouth of the world.


Listen to Anna Belle Kaufman read this poem:

Total
0
Shares

Life is a Gift

Video with

Short excerpt from an interview Charles Eisenstein gave on the Know Thyself podcast

#59 Attuned

Podcast with

Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo discuss Thomas’ new book Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma

Murmurations: Growing Through Grief

Article by

At its core, grief is an acknowledgment of love

The Resonance of Grief

Video with

Visual journey with narration from our recent conversation with Francis Weller by Yasen Stoev

How a mother’s voice shapes her baby’s developing brain

Article by

Most of us carry a mother's voice in the neural patterns of our brain

The Lost Art of Grief

Video with

An examination of sorrow and grief in Terrence Malick’s ‘The New World’ based on Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow To connect with Francis Weller, we invite you to this upcoming Community Conversation:

A Child’s Song

Article by

A touching fable on the power of song and community

Breaking the Drought

Poem by

"We are not enemies though they taught us so at school

Support SAND with a Donation

Science and Nonduality is a nonprofit organization. Your donation goes directly towards the development of our vision and the growth of our community.
Thank you for your support!