rhia_starsong | (no subject)

I said goodbye to you at spring break, and then
renewed my farewell at Easter, but
it's still hard.
Maybe all life's blessings are meant to be--trust in the difficult.
So I said goodbye to your body--no, not yet,comes the anguished whisper
from my traitorous heart--and tried to remember
other good times from more distant years.

I remembered life anecdotes told and patiently retold as
weekend bedtime stories until the little girl in your lap knew them all by heart--memory transference.
I remembered bowls of sweet peanut butter and sticky grape jelly in the kitchen,
as I sat barefoot in the summer heat: just one more before bed, please, Grandma?
I remembered years of Sunday School and church together, and Sunday dinners too.
Easters past, when you would hide eggs for hours,
Christmases ago when we would play Santa, years have
blurred these myriad memories seemingly into one.
The rarer memories later on, made
more precious by their rarity, of you coming to visit;
piano recitals, high school graduation, cards in my college mailbox.

I looked around this house where so much
of my childhood was authored,
and saw us trimming the wisteria out front,
playing baseball out back (or on the office whiteboard),
and late-night conversations about absolutely nothing,
which seemed like everything, that will always be our secrets.

I taste Andes candies and Kraft singles pulled from the 'fridge
as a ten o'clock snack, and as I do,
I know that you are here with me,
smiling and remembering too.
And because I cannot stop them, tears of love
gather on my lashes--salty tribute to our past and seal on a promise to
always remember how much
we love each other.

April 18, 2007

(no subject)

Thoughts go out to you

no subject