Grief goes on

Grief goes on
            in disarray
along arteries clotted
            with dried weeds
where still appear
surprising flowers
            unseen.

Grief goes on
trailing mud skirts
            of ill wind
past roadside ditches
thick with cast-off
            packages
of unfinished
            business

--what has been
    or might have been.

White or purple bells
            smile out of this litter
seedheads hold what yet could be
            but what does it matter?

Grief speeds on
with nothing more to see
            than a painted line
-- white-black-- yellow-grey--
            On Grief will ride
            a one-track fast lane.

All all all
    that doesn't matter
    has never been
    and never will be seen
falls away to either side
so that this cold cargo
    -- chicken hearts on ice,
    unspilled guts --
will make the end of the line.

Of course the hope is always that a poem can speak for itself, and the last few lines especially need to make an impact, find their way home, and not leave you hanging out on 3rd base at the end of the inning. Apologies aside, I think I can clarify what I was about. The poem is really about a state of mind that can lead to squalor.

Grief is a truck speeding down a highway. How? I'm not talking about a simple emotion, but a reaction to an emotion, a distress pattern.The pattern of locking it all up and plowing ahead. Grief is closed and half-blind, but it's not static; it has mass and trajectory. It seems to have a destination, a purpose, but it has locked away its true purpose, and can't see the promise all around, so its only destination is death: the end of the line. Its cold cargo--chicken hearts on ice, being love and the fear of it; and unspilled guts, being closed communication, truth untold. This may be a good way to transport perishable goods, but not the best way to live one's life. Squalor is one result--litter, cast-off packages of unfinished business--of this blindness and frozen motivation. My cold cargo suggest the cause, and also the antidote. Open up, be willing to love and tell the truth. Bless