The Laboratory

We're always thinking of those hours 
of splendor in the grass, the glory

in the flowers and trying not to grieve
as if grieving is bad for us,

not one of those necessary vitamins
for which there must be a required

daily amount as much as there is for 
happiness and if you were a scientist

in the laboratory of life, you would be 
pouring the sorrow and happiness

back and forth in the test tubes, 
heating them together on your

Bunsen burner, hoping to get them
to combine so that we could go beyond

one or the other, go beyond the grief 
that is whispering in our ears. 

We would have the two together, 
the perfect combination, the joy

and sorrow, the call and response,
the wind and the leaves, the sprout and the earth,

the compost and the seed, because everything 
needs something else to make it whole,

even the hole needs its own emptiness 
the call in the dark, the echo in the light.

by Stuart Kestenbaum