National Poetry Writing Month 2023, day 7

the funny thing about sorrow

sorrow visits us all our lives
for a weekend here
and three years there
and at least a little every single minute

but it can make you laugh
as with a funeral
where the best friend of the deceased
tells funny stories
and the gathered are grateful
for laughter’s relief
and the brief escape
reliving ridiculous episodes

when you have a good cry
an ugly cry or a soft cry
it’s funny how it sometimes seems
you just had a bath or a baptism
and sins or street grit
seem to have been washed away

my mom helped my aunt zilpha cry in 1965
while kid-me watched from the next room
they were looking at letters from her brother
my grandfather
who’d been institutionalized
and died in 1963
funny how later that day
aunt zilpha was so cheery and aware

i have a little sorrow going on right now
and it’s funny how i am sort of celebrating
by not talking about it
but posting a new profile picture
with my sorrowful face on display

it is good to smile
but it is also good to cry
good to let friends know you’re not ok
but will be ok soon

and so it will be with you, my friend,
at certain times of loss,
or adverse circumstance

Shakespeare’s Falstaff said a funny thing:
“Who hath [honour]?
He who died o’ Wednesday.”

beware wednesday
says this joker
cracking wise
because sorrow