I. Before and After Dying
Yesterday a wasp landed on the rail to my back deck
and died.
Today a honey bee made a feeble attempt
to enter my car and join me
on the drive to work.
The last gasp in late fall
of bees looking for a warm place
to be before dying.
Believe me, I can relate.
About a month after my dad died,
my mother took me and Gail outside
to show us Sam’s star.
She said it suddenly appeared about
a week after his death and was proof
that he was watching out for her.
I told Gail I was worried about her,
Gail said, “Don’t, she’ll be alright.”
Those of us who have not, but need to
say goodbye;
twist in the breeze like the last
leaf on an oak, desperately clinging
to the known and familiar ways.
A wise man once said, “Make no changes for a year,”
and then he died, leaving his wise woman
in charge of the lost and grieving
left gasping for air in the vast vacuum
that followed his passing
from this presence to the other.
II. Pain
Goodbye hurts,
it hurts down to the marrow
of my bones
which someday will be
pulverized and returned to the sea.
The hurt blackens all
of the colors that used
to live in my life and
readies me for the deep, dark night
that leads somewhere, but
no one here can say for sure where.
No, don’t give me the surety
that you have no right
to give. You don’t really know
anything for sure, just as I.
I know that hurt can change
a rainbow into black and
like all other obstacles we face,
must be overcome before it
takes us down
below the ground.
III. Us
There have been 18,800 days
of me and
7,035 days of us.
When I say goodbye to you,
I say goodbye to us and
most of me.
It was late on a Thursday evening,
early November and I was down at
the gas station helping Sara with her
paperwork and you dropped by to say hello.
You were getting impatient with me by then;
your transfer had gone through and we had already
danced and kissed and you made sure I
had the chance to run my hand down
your leg and it would have happened
that Saturday night if Sara had not got drunk
and picked a fight that Bud had to finish and
we all ended up at the jail half the night,
but with another fun story to tell, but
I never told this one,
did I?
I asked you where you were going as
you started to wander off and you
replied that you were going to
the Holiday Inn to drink schnapps and beer and
I recalled what you had said about
what that leads to on the night I saw
you tie a knot in a cherry stem with your tongue.
I looked at Sara and calmly asked her
what I should do.
Sara, who besides having a Psych degree,
was in San Fran in the summer of ’67 and
on a farm in upstate New York in the summer of ’69.
From the moment I hired her,
we started teaching each other.
We certainly both got each other immediately.
Sara looked at me and uttered the immortal words;
“Shit or get off the pot.”
I ran into your arms and
all of our tomorrows.
We got schnapps and beer and took it
to my place and sat on the floor and starting watching
LA Law and
never made it anywhere near the
end.
IV. Beauty on the Balcony
On a cool winter’s evening,
long after midnight,
you stood on my balcony
naked to the world
and I waited for
my warm place to be
to return to me.
There are places, words and feelings
that never fade, no
matter how dark
it gets. I remember saying,
“I love you,” and your reply,
“Don’t say it unless you mean it.”
I wanted nothing else but
to share your space for
the rest of my life.
It was just one month later
that we both knew for sure.
“Will you take this woman…”
The moon and the stars were
shining down on us
“I could turn the air conditioner on…”“It’s better this way…”
“To have and to hold…”
with a deep yellow glow
“I want to hold you for the rest of my life…”“Promise?”
“I do.”
as we became one
“In sickness and in health…”
“Where did the stars go?”“It’ll be alright.”
by candlelight.
“So very dark…”“I’m here, dear.”
“Till death do you part?”
“I can’t feel you anymore…”“I did.”
“Yes, we did!”
“Whisper to me, wet and wild…” All of our tomorrows
belong to yesterday and
even the moonlight fades to black
after the stars are
hidden away and
the whispers die
in the late autumn breeze.
“Goodbye my love.”
MJ Carson
11-01-2009
