Telling Absence

Telling Absence

Death reminds the remaining

to ponder, grieve, and flounder

about what the taking and leaving of life means.

Our education on this subject is limited

our purest faith tells us about a better place,

our frail human hearts wonder why this place isn't good enough?

We steel our hearts against the theft to come

From those that we dearly love 

and even those that we'd thought we'd never miss.

Life can be a blunt instrument and 

when we least expect it

our memories sweep in the sweet and pour out the sour.

The one constant in the whole shebang,

the one thing that wriggles about like a baby after napping

is the telling absence of one both gone and still achingly present.

On occasion, I have imagined my truest love taken from me

and I shudder and undulate with revolt

I shake the thought out like a sharp stone thrown, hostile and terrifying.

I think we know about the pain to come.

I think we have to physically deny its presence

until it is undeniably our truth and embedded as part of our existence.

So, when I plant a carefully chosen flower

it is both for your memory and also the persistent presence,

my hopeful solace for the seasons and visits yet to come. 

A poem that I started writing in 1997 when an employee at the university that I worked committed suicide and made me wonder why. I updated it recently for various reasons, but essentially because I understand the tightrope between life and death differently now.