Sorrow’s Kitchen
A Poem
Gary Phillips
Do you think your troubles belong to you? Think again.
Do not hold them so protectively to your breast. I see you.
Rumi says our sorrows come to us like gifts, pomegranates
Ready to explode into a thousand seeds of joy. Don’t resist.
Ben Robertson’s grandmother gathered all the children
Of her family every Thanksgiving to make a solemn speech
From the high wooden porch of her ancient Alabama house:
Shrink not from sorrow! For that is the voice of God to thee!
Such theatrics. I remember sitting with friends in my twenties
In Appalachia; our host was very old and blind besides, Madge.
But she knew every inch of her little cabin like a treasured text.
We were young, and passed around a question to know each other:
What’s the hardest thing ever happened to you? Madge hung her head
And sighed: When the chestnuts died. They were my best and favorite friends.
