TENDING GRIEF AT THE GREAT SALT LAKE, A RITUAL by Kathryn Knight Sonntag

Clouds unspool above light 
Departing. Salt makes diviners of gulls, 
Tiny archways of bones, pooling sockets
Long emptied by sun’s fire. A circle  
Of strangers, we imbue our grief 
Into stick, feather, and stone. I long 
To be emptied, to not fear this cold, which is 
To not fear its memory. 
This lake is memory. The couple 
Next to me sees into the watery 
Expanse their son alive again, or grey 
Still, as the waves. Salt is so many wings. 
Hair whips my face. I loose myself 
Like the sand, lifting in eddies, blurring 
The line of earth and sky—one firmament 
Abstracting the other.                Lean into gales, 
Release your vestiges to the brine. Wail. 
Who is to say we do not feel the edges 
Of the made world, that we are not 
Recomposed as wind covers us with her
Orbiting tale. I am faceted, not cold: I 
Resist nothing.               No one survives, yet 
Everyone does. Sulfur in our noses, 
Crystals caking boots, the sting of lake inside 
Millions of ribcages, speaking here is 
The aura of the world. 
Speaking, this is what it is to be 
Inside. The light—