GRIEF Poem: Graydient, by Jane Smyly

Two sketchers scratch their pencils
In an otherwise empty room
They fire off a cannon
But I can’t hear the boom

Oh, you look so radiant
Like polished cobblestone
In seal and silver gradients
And ashen monochrome

Gray like asphalt, the road you take
Gray like a blizzard’s last snowflake
Gray like pigeons in the air
Gray like my grief, gray like my despair

You’re moondust in my fingers
And you still smell like smoke
My eyes fog, and I tear up
My misery’s evoked

Gray like stairs that rise to heaven
Gray like two thirds rounding to point seven
Gray like elephants and their tusks
Gray as you’re reduced to dust

Dull pencils tracing graphite
In the outline of a tomb
They fire off a cannon
Now I can hear the boom