Dave Bonta's "In mourning" is a short, strange poem about grief that doesn't behave the way we expect. The speaker doesn't find peace in church. Instead it feels like "a dull ache," a place that presses on the pain rather than easing it. The urge to hit an urn "laced with silver" is startling: an object tied to death and remembrance becomes something the speaker wants to strike. That suggests anger, restlessness, maybe a wish to break the stillness that mourning demands.
The second stanza widens the view. "War after war" makes the loss feel bigger than one person's, as if grief repeats across history. Then comes the odd image of a bed "so soft / I could not sleep." Comfort turns into a source of guilt or unease. The poem seems to say that softness feels wrong when others suffer or die. The mood is uneasy, numb, and quietly bitter, with no neat consolation offered.