Can you see it from where you're standing?

Can you see it from where you're standing?

Can you see a door? A gate? A hole in the air?

Can you tell what's on the other side

of that nearing portal?

Is it the lavender fields of Provence?

Could you walk into it now, breathe it in,

hear the gracious hum of bees?

Is it a waving field of wheat closer to home;

its golden susurrus murmuring like the sea?

Are redwings darting above windrows of hay?

Are jays bluing the crystal fields of December?

Or is it a workshop with a kiln

and a clock that wants repair?

Do you smell hay

or snow

or sawdust

or book pages

 

or beeswax?

Is it a cathedral

or a classroom?

Will you walk in and lecture?

Will you pick up a hymnal and sing?

Easter Thoughts on Dying

 As Paul told the Christians
    of Corinth, "Behold,
I tell you a mystery. We

will not all sleep but

we will all be changed..."

My beloved ones 

have long been sleeping--

a hybernation of decades

since my grandfather

was last awake.

And I? I have been

the doorway

of a new generation.

My hips widened,

my face softened,

my jaw firmed.

My father fell asleep

and we have been 

changed--

my hair become a trail

of white stars,

my cheeks, the veil of time.

In time, my husband slept,

and my mother,

my dearest friends,

my hopes and

aspirations.

Until all my moments

pause on the cusp 

of midnight.

I close my eyes to dream

a dream long awaited....

And when they open

on an endless April sky,

I know you!

You, my beloved one,

who has been alseep

so long!

You woke before me

and you've been waiting.

And I know you.

Your face grinning

down at me, I have never seen.

A boy's face, unlined,

creased with laughter,

but I know you--

my father, freed from frailty,

unstructured from the strictures

of fatherhood,

free

finally to love 

without dependence

or the pall of parting,

you take my hand

and we run, a boy and girl,

into the golden wheat

ringing with the laughter

of all the children

gathered to God. 

Daffodils

The daffodils are here again, dearest. 

Aren't daffodils supposed to be

the ushers of hope

springing full grown 

from the mind of God?

But do you know what I did 

when you told me what I already knew? 

I ran outside.

I fled your tidings into a field 

filled with daffodils,

those bright blooms now

the Flower of the Knowlege of Good and Evil

that brought death into my garden.

bitter synesthesia

have you seen those videos:

someone; maybe

        a teenage boy, an elderly man

                a seeming hard creature of hidden emotions

is given a pair of glasses with dark lenses

he weeps. he weeps

suddenly seeing color

for the first time ever. 

his tears never fail

to move my tears.

i never knew words had color

until cruel dis

         ease stole yours away

and gave me this 

    bitter

        synesthesia.

out of the world

        slowly bled your words

                into black silence.

                        what will ever

                                show me colors again?

it turns out that we always die alone

it turns out that

we always die alone

and those whose hearts

are with ours

die alone

beside us

all of us together

in isolated

anguish

holding

our breaths as

you breath out 

your last

I finally just said it--

I finally just said it--

what I was thinking--

what she was thinking--

what you have been thinking?

I know there was never

any guarantee but

I really thought we had ten years.

Why the hell don't we 

have ten more years?

A call came in--

Your name on the screen--

my heart filled with water,

my stomach with salt.

Oh God, what I would have given

to answer that call

and hear your old voice

from before the long, choking years

of its descending silence

like I sometimes do in dreams.

But as I summoned the strength

for a cheerful hello

the call cut off

and the salt ate through to the water

to pour out into 

the vast space left 

in the silence of your voice.