Jates

I don’t know what poetry is
if not words left behind
for the people you love,
to guide them back
to the places we will be from,
those old places you showed us
beneath endless stars
and so many neighbouring eternities,
as if we all belong to each other
in some boundless and beckoning uncertainty,
something you can only sense on this beach
as I walk out into the cold water
and let a bloom float away for you,
old friend, a lily for remembering
when your great heart burst into light,
broke to beat no more and beat forever
on further shores than thought can find,
where barefoot seekers dance
for sand mussels like you showed us,
right between the tides and
all this time.

TRACE

Dearly Departed

Septem Sermones