Mela Blust
of grief
my own daughter has inherited the burden
of trying to protect me from the world.
or sometimes to protect the world from me.
the beautiful, terrible world, who knows the story of the whale
who carried her stillborn calf through the salish sea
for seventeen days.
where is the story of the child
who carries the mother?
on the highway, an unrecognizable lump of bloody meat
lies in the midday sun; my daughter begins to tell me
about a song, points to a field glistening in the sun.
beyond the tree break, past the orange osage trees,
a deer, his eyes so wide.
Mela Blust is a Pushcart Prize and four-time Best of the Net nominated poet residing on a small, forested paradise in eastern central Pennsylvania. She is a trauma survivor, a mother, a lover, a daughter, and blooming into so many other forms. She likes gardening, wears all black, loves tequila and adores living partially feral among the other wild things. m(e)-la—Pronounced mee-lah. From Ancient Greek μέλας (melas, “black, dark”).