Grief can endure a long, long time. A deep loss is very reluctant to let us set it aside, to push it into a corner of memory. Here the Arkansas poet, Andrea Hollander Budy, gives us a look at one family’s adjustment to a death.

For Weeks After the Funeral

The house felt like the opera,

the audience in their seats, hushed, ready,

but the cast not yet arrived.

And if I said anything

to try to appease the anxious air, my words

would hang alone like the single chandelier

waiting to dim the auditorium, but still

too huge, too prominent, too bright, its light

announcing only itself, bringing more

emptiness into the emptiness.

Copyright © 2006 by Andrea Hollander Budy. First published in “Five Points” and included in her book, “Woman in the Painting.” Reprinted by permission of the author and Autumn House Press.