"Grief fills the room up of my
absent child."  Shakespeare
 
For you have entered another country,
gotten a visa, gone to live where we,
your friends, have no passport, can only
be tourists.  You send us notes on cards
postmarked Purgatory:
   The map of this country defies cartography,
   there are no expressways or shortcuts.
   Instead, you must come to the City of Grief
   as an immigrant, someone who has come to dwell,
   ready to stay a long time.  The borders
   are vague and indefinite, no checkpoints
   or guard posts, difficult to tell
   when you've entered or left.  And the coasts,
   too, are uncharted, rocky shoals, desolate reefs.
   Throw away the guidebooks.  Enter on your knees.
   Go past the shores of mourning.  See how loss
   has shaped the topography, each contour line.
   The map of the heart has no relief.