Listen

Listen,
   I know none of this makes sense to you.
   It doesn't make any sense to me.
   It's horrible.
   It's wrong.
   And it feels like
   there's nothing you can do.
   I also know you're wondering what's going to happen next.

Well,
   You're going to feel really sad for a very long time.
   I wish that wouldn't happen, but it will.

So,
   while that time's going by, this is what we're going to do:

   We're going to keep breathing in,
   and we're going to keep breathing out.
   We'll visit and talk and bring each other food
   so we have something to do by and by.

And,
   we're going to surround ourselves with each other
   and all the ones we love,
   so we're never really alone.
   We're friends and we're family,
   and that's what friends and family are for.

Also...
   The crying will stay for awhile. 
   While we're doing that,
   we'll make a long list of all the good things
   that she gave to us in our lives.

   We'll speak about her often
   because that's a good thing to do.
   And we'll tell each other sweet little stories to remember her by
   while we pass those stories down through the years, forever.

Next,
   We'll make another list.
   This one will be
   about what we think
   that she would want us to do.
  
   Let's make part of that list right now:

   The first thing I think
   she'd want us to do,
   is not keep things hidden inside,
   to tell each other how we feel.
   So if we're feeling bad
   or are hurting too much
   We'll always find someone to talk to.

Now,
   It's going to be really hard.
   But, I promise,
   I'll be there for you
   for as long as you need me to be.

Sometimes,
   Someone else near you
   might be really sad too.
   And you'll feel better
   if you help them feel better
   by listening to them for a while.

Of Course,
   You know she loved you.
   And that's not going away.
   So when you pass it on
   to the ones you love,
   a part of her will stay.

Eventually,
   Better times will come to us,
   through the long days
   by and by.
  
   We won't forget her,
   and we'll always remember
   but we will forget to cry.

   And slowly,
   things will begin to feel normal again

Finally,
   What I'm telling you
   is that you are not alone.

   And, I love you.
   And, I'm here for you.
   And, things are going to get better
   even though nothing makes any sense
   to you and me right now.
 

What I would not give
to remember
small tender moments
spent together.
You with me,
me with you.

~

Tessa praying
on Berkeley Hill,
out loud. 

Hands clasped kneeling
towards the Sun--
Calling out to her god;
Pressing her devotions up court
and begging for that spirit
of infinity
to see me for what I was,
beautiful in her eyes.

And, as I was as I am,
I watched,
Unclaimed, undrawn...
without feeling
that which 
the faithless
wish unto themselves.

Her prayer went out
in late 1979.
Thoughts are fast.
If not faster than light,
that still places
her hoping words
some thirty four light years
from
Earth...
Past Centauri,
Past Pollux,
Somewhere near
forever.
 

Despair

Fear not hopelessness
                           nor doubt.
              For We breathe in,
              And We breath out;
And Sadness--
              Can damn well wait,
                                             While we two walkabout.
Every laugh and smile,
                           precious havens from despair;

Every little while we smile away,
                         It takes us there.
There, where being together
                                         is being
                                                      not so very far apart.
For being friends
              is a victory of heart
                     and a centeredness and start.
                             where the measure's of our mark
                                                            and in the manner
                                                                         of our own
                                                                               choosing.
                       
                            For we are friends,
                            each the lifting half
                            of the other's bad day.
                            Both the strength
                            of each other
                            and the proof of
                            one another's
                            concept.
 

A couple of decades ago

So we take the curve at a screaming seventy miles an hour;
and I feel the knock of a vodka bottle at my heels
as It rockets out from beneath the seat
and I think, in this survived to day,
how did we ever get to be the age that we've become?

Ghost

I know the color of your eyes.
You told me, remember?
Know, my Beautiful One,
that I lied to only make you smile.
That I lied as to them being blue.
They are ocean green my Lovely,
The color of the shoreless Sea.

It was a year and day after meeting you first,
meeting you first that very first time.
That first time I laid eyes upon you;
You and your chestnut flowing hair
in the autumn shadowed trail
through the Fairhaven trees.

I was warned in advance
not to fall in love with you.
I was warned in advance...
that you were drawing near,
that you...were a great beauty
of legend-like pose,
of paused breath.
of singularity.

Darling know,
even in a world of free will,
there is nothing I could do.
nothing I could have done
save for what I did
in that briefest moment
when I saw you first.

A year and a day.
It was almost then and you were raking leaves
by the side of the Big Yellow House.

I was there moving in and stepped round from the car.
You were raking leaves with the Autumn.
The Autumn stirring about you
fading leaves brilliant, scattered all about
and the wind the softest movement in your hair.

The wind the softest movement
as all movement to mine eyes
had ceased.

A year and a day
and I must tell of it.
There is no forgetting,
No refuge.
There is no healing distract.

You lingered, close at hand.
Your voice slowing time.
Your lips speaking petals
in that state you could cast
to cloak all time as hanging still.
You stood forest quiet.
Your stance, statued,
waiting for me
to accept
that softest invitation
to lean in...

I hesitate even to rethink,
lest I lose yet another of so many years spent,
spent silver shadow chained
by lingered remembering,
by self-calculated, soulful, regret.

...a kiss.

A First kiss. 
An Elysian kiss.
a kiss so beautiful,
so dismissing of all things past,
so construing of that which would be the new measure,
the forever measure against which
any claiming beauty
yet to come
would needs be compared eternally.

I will not describe it here.
That kiss so beautiful,
so awakening of my life;

It haunts my ageless mind.
It is really just too
heartbreakingly lovely
to use words at all to tell.

So only this I will say
in the quiet
of my unnumbered,
ending years...

Beautiful One.
Be it a day,
a year,
a long life's stretch
without.

It's always You.