What Came to Me

I took the last
dusty piece of china
out of the barrel.
It was your gravy boat,
with a hard, brown
drop of gravy still
on the porcelain lip.
I grieved for you then
as I never had before.

From The Sorrow Psalms: A Book of Twentieth-Century Elegy edited by Lynn Strongin. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.