It Is Brutal

The Good Listening Project - Katherine Gekker - It Is Brutal poem.JPG

She said she was going through a “brutally difficult” time because she was semi-estranged from her children, all young adults.

She knew that this period would not always last, but she also didn’t know how long this time would go on.

One comfort for her was the book she had read to them when they were children, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. A poet herself, she found comfort in the rhymes and the rhythms.

The book’s message about having to go through any obstacle was a lesson to her — that she needed to work through her feelings, and not attempt to go under or over them.

Listener Poet Katherine Gekker

Inova Schar Cancer Institute

February 2020

It Is Brutal —

— that terrible process

of facing deep sorrow.

Alienation.

I can’t go over it.

I can’t go under it.

I have to go through (all of) it.

Wear my invisible cloak

of estrangement,

endure these feelings.

This is my actual life.

Relief may come sooner.

Relief may come later.

(I don’t know.)

My comfort?

The book I used to read

to my young children:

“We’re Going on a Bear Hunt”

(We’re NOT scared.)

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