Slaking Grief’s Thirst

This poem, ELIXIR, was written at the time of our loss of our little girl, Zoe Alexandra, in-utero five months before birth.  We had tried to conceive for years.  We had succeeded with support of IVF.

This loss began a subterranean journey into adulthood via the dark road of loss. It is the journey we all take and do well to honor by acknowledging its presence CONSCIOUSLY.   The painting is a recent painting of one I did at the time of the loss and dream in 1995.

In the dream - and thus the painting - there were three jello like liquids in a yellow refrigerator that I opened.  One was yellow jello, one was green jello, and one a mercurial silver liquid.  While I was instructed not to drink it in the dream (the silver elixir), I grabbed it and drank it straight down to its dregs.

That was the entrance into the opening of my ability to live with, among, and amid the grief that accompanies rich and quixotic life.  The journey of adulthood entails the needed ability of being able to sustain mutually exclusive emotions and beliefs.

This elixir and this death was the beginning of the Way of Grief - the Conjunction of Opposites.


I know what the silver
elixir was.

The drink I stole and
consumed to slake
my thirst.

It was grief;
and O how it
burned out my soul
and ran through my body,
out of my toes,
onto my sandals.

It came to me
A week ago in a dream
posing as a drink
I was told I should not
drink.

O mercurial elixir,
O burning change.

I know what the silver elixir was.
It was Zoe and the alchemy of
hellish change that has begun.