The many textures of absence

absence is a toothache

the tongue, a snake searching for prey

absence is a severed limb

echoing the intent of things it once did

absence is a flower

all petals fallen, the bud burnt, bowed and defeated

In these days of absence

I have become a tired river, I meander,

curl back on words and thoughts,

remember old cliffs and rocks,

the cover of cool places lost

as the sun discovers a way to expose me again

I have begun to sleep

while standing, while talking

while laughing at the day to day excuses

of how we pass the time while watching the slow fade

of memories that become absent

because they can no longer accumulate

like the time my father died and I realized

I would never hear his voice

never again see him smile

nor know the touch of his hand

or the gentle rise of his right eyebrow

like the earth stranded beneath the sun

baked, fried, defeated

and the clouds remain absent

and the only shade

is in the heart of the deep cracks that split me apart

even as I wait

A week already-almost:

Tomorrow it is

next weekend already

and last weekend

now has all these days in-between;

each day turned opaque, hidden -

Grief has a craftsman’s fingers;

has time to kill, time to turn grit

into the darkest pearl

and a tree into searing coal.

Grief rests in all my spaces,

like that moment

between the inhale and the exhale

or that spot between seeing

one thing and then the next - scenes 

you would have painted, now will never exist.

Grief tells me time has passed

while, being the Trickster, tricks me

into thinking last weekend has yet to pass.

Last weekend Kev, we said goodbye,

overhead the sun shone, beside me, my wife

cried...Jo wept too as he played his guitar,

each pluck a rending of my heart’s soured strings,

and you, hidden in that plain pine box,

could only have been resting – surely…

It was only last weekend when I 

carried you to the car—

the rope not rough enough to take away

the weight of cost—

and let loose a paper airplane

to transport your spirit

into the sunshine and light.

It was only last weekend

and yet

it seems not a moment has passed

and

that the years lie ahead

without you.

Humanity's Footprints

In whispers, it is said, mouths

hidden behind walled hands,

that God’s words are found in the sound

of water; water pooling, trickling,

flowing in rivers, crackling across rocks.

It is thought as well, though no one admits,

cracked lips sealed tight lest the words excite,

that the devil is found in the sound

of sand; sand blown, brushing,

driven across the land, filling the towns.

It is never mentioned, though well understood,

that when the water and sand merge - there

in the mud is the sound of humanity; humanity

sucking, gripping, pulling, leaving wordless shapes

in spaces of things forever departed.

Soldier buried beneath the red sea:

When the red sea crashed

my children of the future

became lost in the non-being of never-will-be.

Washed clean

by water held back and then released

yet I,

a soldier forced to follow or starve;

driven down the bank to follow the Israelite -

am I less than the slave,

should a god decide my fate

by changing theirs?

Or is that the essence of faith -

that fate decided

will not erase your fate

in the slate cleaned by the concealed

hand of a god playing dice in a hall

with other gods great or small -

the bones of future children (as well as the present circumstance)

the chips passed around

in this game of devil-may-care betting

between beings unseen?

Or is it that the gods are no more

than echoes of the genetic twining

wishing to forestall its own demise

by creating future strands and in this copying,

as our blood courses through artery and vein,

we hear the voice of  the true God?

Do we pretend afterlife knowing the death

we must embrace

means some of us lose the race

towards procreation and to appease as all,

lest it be us in particular that fall,

we enchant ourselves with the possibility

of reaching that lofty and eternal hall after the moment

when the red sea stops flowing and the pump falls still?