Blankness and Grief

Karen Solie implies
Waste’s final form is grief.
The deer on the road’s edge

Browsing spring green in gusts
Of cool, dry wind look up
At an approaching car.

Is grief waste’s final form?
You suspect it isn’t,
Much as you like the phrase.

Something like a blankness
Of perfect entropy,
Something that couldn’t waste

Any further, had nothing
Left to waste—wouldn’t that
Amount to waste’s last stage?

There’d be no grief in that.
Grief is an animal,
Living thing linked to loss

Like a terrible wound.
It may be the final
Form of love, memory.

The last memory grieves
For memory itself.
Waste is more productive.

The deer move on. The spring
Moves on into summer,
Doe and fawn now in trees.