Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Reasons to Weep

 Reasons to Weep

Because I’m flooded

with feelings, I weep.

Because feelings

are not enough, I weep.

Because your actions

have moved, me, I weep.

Because there is so much more

that wishes to be moved, I weep. I weep.

I weep because someone must weep.

Is it true, someone must weep?

Once they hired women to weep

because they knew the expression

of grief was essential—

they paid them to wail

and scratch at their faces and mourn.

But what does the blue sky care if I weep?

Or the gray sky? Or sunset? Or dawn?

What do tears mean to the dead?

What do they mean to the living?

I weep because I can’t stop the tears.

I weep because tears can’t stop me.

I weep because tears invite me

into the flow of all water,

the flow which goes the way all things go,

away from the self to shores of the all,

and from the shores of the all

back into the core of the self.

— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer