The Anti-Grief

Day after day of rain. A ticket straight to the mild-mannered hell of rethinking whatever, the drive to EconoFoods: not a lot of grief in that. You need staples — bread, rice, eggs. Here’s a list: almonds, yogurt, all the little anti-griefs add up. Did I tell you? my grandfather sings from the grave. They have my old Philco here. I know all about your world of godawful and too bad. I keep driving. In rain. Some luck required. Stop light. Flashy cars on both sides playing radios too loud. Ear damage! I used to shout out the window, my boy in the front seat trying hard to shrink, not to know who is that crazy at the wheel. Grandfather likes saying: what? Half-deaf even now. Half a lot of things, anytime. Half, what gives? giving way. If there is a we or a you or an I finally. He’d cup an ear if he had an ear. So it is, the first anti-grief, a feather he picked up. My childhood, walking with the oldest man I ever, 1874 his start date. Alarm and Should Have, two roads he would not cross, and Consequence a street over, he ignored completely. Always an eye out for the great small peculiar. A feather. Sometimes handed to me. Or he’d oil a clock with it right off the curb. Into a pocket.