Telling Time

Let me blunder through another day
mourning the tinny honey of my words.

"I'm fine. I really am fine."

God, or something of that spirit, sits with me and pats my hand
when I say what I have learned.

Fine sadness, is delicate porcelain between my fingers,
steaming with hot tea and not enough to say.

"He would have been 21 today."

The warbler has taken the attention of the funeral director
as he tells me the story of his son.
I am patient in the loutish silence we share.
It is not a lofty place where we shine without fault.

We wallow in the opulent ashes
and the smell of the last breath,
all witnesses of something we'd forgotten.


This is part of the deal we make
to be in human time.

Twenty One

At dusk in the garden
I listened for you
and your gentle cry
chirping with the wax wings,

in the whispers of a warrior hummingbird
coming close to the bee balm
as if to call my bluff

as if I had a vision
twenty one years after
the vapor of this short life.

The ghost of you is here
in the flowers and in two candles,

for birth
for death.

The darkness is lit
by northern lights
and a sliver,
the silver moon.