The Years Without (A Start?)

[The desire to have said something is not the same as having something to say.]

Somehow, the years without
fill up in ways that preserve
the serene emptiness
of physical loss.

Emotion is conserved,
or converted
into something else--
sometimes tears,
other times words,
often dispersed without
acknowledgement:
an unannounced shiver,
a prolonged look,
something unsuspecting,
suddenly realized across
dull time.

Just recently,
I've noticed the coyote
somehow less shy of the roadside--
and twice the saintly heron
has returned
to the once dry pond,
now silky with tall reeds,
crowding the center
like some green castle
rising up from its moat.

The comfort of the familiar,
slowly displaces what was;
what has disappeared
is only traceable as echo,
recorded in doubtful memory,
seared in scar tissue,
too easily hidden away.

Let there be ghosts.

May they return
as lights for us
to read one another's
upturned faces by.

Cinerum

“Now ravel up the roots of workman oak trees” Merton

Consider the root,
Instead of the branch:
Left to wither?

Each symbolic sacrifice
Traces a shadow circumference:
Ignoring the growth-ring?

If you were to see me,
Ash-carrier, brow-beat,
What story would construct itself?

As it is, there is only forgetfulness,
& a choice to struggle through:
a doubter hanging on to skeptical confidence.

All this while:
The root still clutches & the branch is yet to break,
Where come all these ashes?