Wildflower Blue
Saying goodbye to someone who was never there to someone
you never knew and whose ashes were scattered years ago on a
grave in the middle of nowhere in a town that hardly exists
though it used to
Saying goodbye to a friend whose letters were sent to the end
of the world to a child never met of a cousin he hardly knew
because those of a certain bent a certain soul with a seventh
sense know who they can talk to
Saying goodbye to the one who was not your father because
your father died too soon to say goodbye to saying goodbye to
the childhood you didn't have because childhood ended too
soon saying goodbye to what might have been if some time
long ago you'd met him and he'd met you when pain was new
Saying goodbye and thank you to someone who proved you
were not alone because he too had made pain and loss the
mortar of a life that was true
Saying to him: I did this for you
Saying to him because of you the breadth of the world is
nothing and the decades a mere whim and bad blood and death
and grief are just the glue that binds us you to me and me to
you and we are just pieces we two in the whole temple of life
and family we are born to
Saying goodbye to no one there, to a name plate bolted to an
old gravestone, to ashes that have washed into the earth, to
ashes lifted and blown away by prairie wind years ago and
scattered anywhere from the Arctic Sea to the Gulf of
Mexico you know there is nothing here so what can you do
Say goodbye say thank you turn away walk away go out the
cemetery gate close the gate behind you
Then stoop and reach for a wildflower blue tiny as an
infant's fingernail baby-blue blue forget-me-not blue a
wildflower to pluck and press between pages and save as a
forget-me-not memento of you but the petals dropped and
the prairie wind blew and the flower my friend followed
you
(From Four Quarters, by Edith Speers, Esperance Press 2001 pp.147-148.)
|
