Consolation

On August 7, 2016, Caleb Schwab, the 10-year-old son of Kansas state representative Scott Schwab, died while riding Verrückt. The raft he was riding went airborne during the ascent of the second hill and impacted a metal support of the netting, decapitating him.
          —Wikipedia, “Verrückt (Waterslide)”

With both my children safe in bed,
I overheard
The evening news:
A boy, just ten;
An accident; now dead.
A loss of life both awful and absurd.
An image one could not refuse.
What solace, in

This situation,
Can poetry provide?
To write, to offer consolation,
Seems only to dismiss,
Deride.
And so, what good is metaphor?
A tragedy just is; comparisons to this
Or that do nothing more

Than complicate our grief.
What use is simile?
As if death were like anything. What help are rhyme
And meter, when
They only help us memorize what we,
With time,
Want to forget? But then,
There’s also the belief

We need
Such things, since to remember is to lie,
And to mislead
Makes suffering coherent, as words become the larger part
Of loss. Perhaps again, it’s just that I,
With both my children safe in bed,
Still have the privilege to make art
That dares to contemplate the dead.