28.4.06

A Sad Sort of Reminder

There is no such thing as silence
save for the absence of curious other
noises and talks. One day we hold
a person and the next, it grows away
refuses our touches and grasps
until hope against hope
the child returns to the quiet ages
of our tired despondence that sounds
as loud as the absence of the prattle
quite below the hum of mirrors and sinks
in those peculiar hidden frequencies.
Old men and old women stay
like shade near the stronger solid trees
looking each the same in the sound
of thunder and the memory of lightning:
one moment flush with thoughts and dream;
the next, pushing out the last breaths with
a decided effort as if only living mattered
next to the chill in the rumble of an echo,
struggling to get up and just move.

As if there were options.

Children grow old too and move on,
must hear the familiar looming song-
one day but not now, maybe not this now -
covered in a succession of evolutions and improvements.
Prodigals, sentient little beings that we are,
dust to dust as the sayings go. We all come back.
A building up and then these inevitable erosions.
The closer you get, the louder it seems.

2 comments:

ozymandiaz said...

This speaks particularly to me. I have been sitting for the past several days in vigil for my grandmother as she lay dying.

Carmenisacat said...

:( I'm so sorry but not sorry at the same time. You at least get to 'be with her' in her final moments. It is powerful and this poem will forever more be your poem. I will always think of you sitting vigil next to your grandmother. My grandmothers all passed away more than 30 years ago now but I still remember the first funeral. We were behind a diaphanous curtain and everyone crying. I really didn't understand what was going on and when I stepped up to her coffin I can only remember seeing my father and how pale he was. I'd never seen him weak. He was then. THAT is why I cried. I didn't cry for her because after all, she looked pretty cozy in there. It was my father that made me weep and my mother explained to me later that we don't 'cry for the dead but for the living' and I think she was right although I am still not sure if I totally grasp the whole definition of that statement. STILL not sure if I do.

Best wishes to you and your family Ozy.