Death:

Death: it’s solemn, quiet, sometimes insidious

everyone feels the loss the emptiness the
wanting to be so strong and understanding of
something that is beyond all our grasps.
we say things thinking it will be encased
with human empathy, with understanding of
the loss but because our hearts are not the same
our souls may be but we won’t know

until we meet again. we’ll flounder about in space
and we’ll share the moment with the best of grace
yet all does nothing to assuage the pain, the loss,
the wondering, if but one more time,
i could have said ‘i love you’ , one more time
i could have taken you in my arms and said
‘you are part of me to no end’.

we will be together and journey in the same
unending path where your hand shall be in mine,
mi amiga, sing the song we sang together,
the violin whose strings you tickled so well,
i shall bring along so that Shumsky, Heifetz,
Zukerman, Perlman have nothing on us
while Mozart with baton, conducts,
leading us to the mellifluous chords and frets
residing, enmeshed, entwined in our souls

the smiles that smiled at us, that we shared
with so many will follow us to our new abode.
until then, thank you and let me shed my tears
and embrace those soft and wonderful memories

dedicated to my wife’s mother, Ruth, who passed away yesterday five minutes after my poor wife

had arrived in her room. my wife had driven ten and a half hours with her sister and her husband
after receiving a call from her brother the night before stating that their mother had stopped eating.
unfortunately I had to stay behind and babysit our two aging and sickly mini-poodles