When You Leave Us
When you move wordlessly
from one life into another,
you bring all who ever declared our love--
with our hearts, with our mouths.
We all see a new maple, a bush on fire,
a tiny sparrow perched on a flat rock.
Though you’ve made your entrance into a new home,
our old homes are full of the things
you loved. You live on mantles, in journals,
on recipe cards smudged with sugar cookie dough.
Is nothing nearer than love itself--
even when life carefully tucks you in,
closes your bedroom window,
whispers its soft goodnight?
When midnight falls,
we are certain you hear our voices,
low and full on brick patios,
ice cubes swirling in our paper cups.
If we listen carefully,
underneath the crickets
and the murmur of twilight,
we will hear you breathing--
as steady
as this slow dance that begins among us,
underneath the patient stars.
Orginally appeared in Giving Sorrow Words: Poems of Strength & Solace)
