Contemplative Photography: Advent: Saturday, Week 1

The kind words said,

the tender hands

rest briefly on mahogany.

The hard men come

in their t-shirts and their caps

to drop you here

to rest beside the ashes

of your love.

The die is cast,

the dirt and flowers

thrown into the pit,

the carpet rolled away.

The wailing imprecations

of the lost and the bereft resound,
awakening responses in my heart
too harsh to bear.

And so I walk away to get my distance,
and find this marble bench,
set here by some other loving family
thoughtful in their loss.
I sit, and stare
through these dead branches
at a sky too blue, at hills too green,
a day too warm
to witness to the trauma
that lies beneath.

And as tears dry
and focus comes again
to vision dulled with weeping

I see that each fine branch

so delicately etched against the blur

carries, at its tip,

a bud, the promise of new life:

what looks like death
is life already launched anew

though spring and the day

and this new life without you are all new.

The marble seat grows cold:

I shiver, and I feel a coat
steal over my shoulders--

"You'll catch your death;
(Too late, I want to shout--
It's already here,
the intimations of mortality
too numerous to bear)
put on your coat;
it's not as warm as it looks out here"
and I understand:
it's not as cold as it looks, either.

Your kindness is still here,

it's just taken other forms
and echoes still in the warm tones
of your son.

Contemplative Photography

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Advent: Saturday, Week 1

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