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.