I come to life when color begins to leave
the leaves
when the stain of amber and gold and burnt sienna
seeps into the once verdant green
and school-bus yellow
ushering in the rich and glorious palette
of decay and death.
I begin again in death
find ease and simplicity
when the end is clear and marked.
Mourning, I become moored.
It’s births that undo me,
beginnings with no clear path
the effusion of hope
the disorientation of unfoldings
the rekindled need –
this tiny bud
this new day
this “yes”
this new love –
will last.
Not all buds open.
And even when they do, it is their birth
that initiates their death.
Nothing begins that doesn’t end.
Not a bouquet, not a word
not a stanza, not a refrain.
Certainly not this poem
which began the moment you read
your poem to me
and I knew –
that way we sometimes just know –
that your words
spurred by death
would live again
live a different life
as mine.
Carved in granite
my father’s soul is released from earthly bonds
to be bound in an Eternal bond.
My father’s name will last
until the stone crumbles
and no one who knew him will
be alive to read
his name.
Good, then, that the marker of his death
unveiled today
will last longer than his beginning and end
will outlive me
the one who cast anchor
in harbors that couldn’t harbor me
and needed mourning
to unmoor me.
I pull up again, death releasing me
death beginning me.
Unveiled and visible
I begin again.
-Thank you, B.R., for “unmourned and unmoored”