Words at the Time of Your Death

When you flew one last time,
you showed us how we are like feathers
shimmering in a greater span,
lifted by one another,
aloft by no other power.

We are as singular as that,
as light and as fragile -
opportunists on the updraft of sunrise,
gone when flight takes us past
where touch and a soft kiss can go.

Into that silence we have watched you go.

Forever be our bird in flight.
Linger for us among clouds.
Let us follow you into sky’s cobalt blue
even through the gray of our forsaken days.

Down

Falling drops me down another notch, leaves me flat out with questions of how and why. Then I ask to be pulled up from the mud by any low hand outstretched.

Upright, rolled over and red-faced, still stunned by sharp wet words, what remains but to acknowledge that this moment is among the final ones.

Go on. Get on your feet. Continue.

If a hundred and then a thousand agree, concur on the crimes, call out slurs, shun in unison, the vigil of the ignored truths can still exist outside this circle.

Upward then. Rise up.

Let go of the clinging. A hard heart gains only through its softening. An expanse between what came before and what might be.

That's the way I must now go.