1
Before our birth we are divided, two
In one. So heaven prepares us for the state
In which the sense of where our roots are true
Remains. But still our vision must dictate
The claim of wholeness, so as to show that love
Is worthy of the providence it brings.
This garment of flesh in common can move
Familiarly to be the source love springs.
As when at our first meeting we found the place
That made us one we glimpsed the intended goal
That moved our vision’s urgent journey in both
Directions; at once reflecting heaven’s face
To prove the semblance of its making whole,
Then hold us both to love’s compelling oath.
2
I recall you had already learned as much
As any child might do who enters this world.
You had a simple innocence of touch
In all you did. Not like one who was hurled
From some place already broken away
From innocence and every gift that might
Harbour love’s intention to outweigh
What ever evil would betray its sight.
You were protected all along by a gift
It was your nature to rehearse
With all such innocence as might uplift
The encumbrance of the primeval curse.
All is misbegotten that does not share
The gift you had, as easy as breathing air.
3
Was it the sun itself that oversaw
Your birth, as if the best of spirits knew
Your path was meant to shine? The very law
That brightened where you walked guided so few
That come this way. Could some remote command,
Unknown to most, to your bewilderment,
Make you as newly born to be forearmed
To find no less than each heart’s pure intent?
Now you have been gone these years time
Plays its part to make me wonder, was
It in Eden we lived, in its paradigm
Incarnate on an ungrateful earth: the cause
Of how I weary at it now? I’d climb
To you if I could reach those brightening laws.
4
We pass as all things born must do,
As in a dream, fixed heaven beyond
While all things arduous renew
Their hold to provoke how we respond.
Yet hand in hand we walked to make
A life that wove a bond between
Us, letting such challenges break
No resolve we’d not foreseen.
What of that dream; the very place
That anchored our resolve to spend
Our time together and so retrace
With certain footing as we ascend?
Now you are gone I retrace the ascent
Alone, knowing each step’s intent.
5
Memory makes play to simplify events
Long past while we remain to play its game.
But that cannot be all since it prevents
All disembodiment to stake its claim.
Recalling how we met my memory
Grows complex with the weight my heart must hold.
We loved and found such magnanimity
That time could not account for or enfold.
Such disembodiment as is now your state
Makes love no less a challenge I must meet;
But not as play as time commands. Of late
The rules we play by are timeless and complete.
Memory watches over us only to play
At making our love its lasting protégé.
6
A full sun shone the day you went. Despite
The intervening years there grief still shines.
The place you left remains as does the light
You bought to it to defy what time defines.
Now every moment lost to absence plants
Fresh grounds of loneliness among the waste
Of years we’ve spent apart. That same light slants
Across the memories each moment traced.
But such austerity is never the end.
The sun holds by its nature an antidote
To interrupted love such as ours had found.
Light builds a timeless vision to extend
Beyond the place death’s kingdom finds remote.
In just such hidden light is love’s true ground.
7
Your going made it a day of days.
Such was its nature it made play
To match the brightness of the life
You lead. Your gentle face at ease
Upon the pillow seemingly to shun
Those cares as latterly, at times,
Had cast a sun-denying shade
Across a face that of itself
Could bring such brightness to those days
When others struggled with darkening hours
Of sorrow and despair. You shone
As was your gift from natural grace.
Your long held peace still shines to prove
Death has no mastery over the light.
8
I need a lasting image of your face
To hold against erosion of the days.
If time has never offered its good grace
To show me what it is I’m apt to praise,
I’m left to roam in memory through time
To search for one indelible image held
There, seeking to make its presence rhyme
With words and images unparalleled.
How could my works compete with nature’s art?
An art your face was sent to challenge – defeat
It never knew. What it spelled out my heart
Must use to make my composition complete.
Love crafts an image when married to speech;
Your face could match any words within my reach.
9
No day has come but what you have
A place among my thoughts. That day
You left is as today and all
The earlier sorrows hold me still.
It is as if my heart is loath
To lose the least expenditure
Of what we shared in years that now
Have gathered in a depth of loss,
Like seedlings planted out to grow
And flower the more to prove
That what they show can have a life
Beyond the consecrated earth
That holds you, living still, if not
As flesh, no less to prove love real.
10
As one who works with words I find
My tongue still struggles to describe your face.
How can it be the hours, days and months
We shared could so erase what I prized most?
Yet time can truly unmask what time displays;
Enough to question whether the senses bring
Ample conviction to what we think is real.
What’s real enough, sense aside, is you.
This must be so since something of you I held
So dear those years ago returns to me.
Then I could not believe you real without flesh,
But now time filters what’s ephemeral
To let love show a solid presence time
Cannot defeat. You are with me still.
