A FAMILY TIE

A FAMILY TIE

A FAMILY TIE

She lit the candles
of kindness, one by one,
until her ‘Pray for me’
and my unuttered
‘I will mind you in the only state
time is safe, that is, memory’.                                       
 
Your haunting by a younger self
tests a courage to keep faith
when so much disappears –
friends to age, the land itself.
The waves that weep on one lakeshore
leave the other wet with tears.
 
All that was long before I learned
(if I’ve learned anything)
because I read a sign
that any life might be
the same length as
a strand of twine.
 
Time, is it? Or time that’s left?
The hours in which we partake
are but a trick
of retrospect and longing.
When you left home
it was I who was homesick.
 
Now what was and is
have separated, but are still twins  
within that mystery
of time – or time and place,
as if a place
had but a single history.
 
For it was not a letting go,
no, more a series
of sheddings.
How often have I quoted her – 
you can’t dance
at all the weddings.
 
Now you chase your hearts
and aces the days bequeath
but brittle traces.
We might grow by healing.
Be strong, my love,
in the broken places.
 
I’d wake and want to give
the ordinary day
its due.
Who enters age amenably?
Who but a lucky few
complete their lives? It’s true,
 
I’d seek the making
of a summer
in a single swallow.
Do good work,
I’d tell myself,
and the rest will follow.