Fragments spun from kite strings and weeping willows

Poetic and prosaic meditations on the nature of existence, the arrhythmic and unpredictable dance of atoms coming together and falling apart

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Ω

The death of a loved one is the perfect opportunity for an existential crisis. 

To watch someone wink out of existence really drives home the absurd nature of existence. 

The weeping willow in the garden is thriving. The basil is thirsty. 

The prune tree, heavy with Reine Claude, cracked under the weight of its own fruit and the wasps couldn’t be happier.

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Ω

I’m not going to keep any of this. 
All of the old is new. 
Every memory 
a coding pile of corrupted data.
This is not data mining but writing. 
Always writing.
Nothing is ever retrieved
only created anew.
I made you 
and I'm taking you with me
like a talisman.
You will help me live 
a fuller life,
cram love into a fuller heart.

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Ω

We went to the beach two days later.
It was a Thursday.
It felt new.
A newborn gaze. 
The water cool and sharp with brine.
The sky a striking blue
shredded by clouds.
I flew my four-string kite
and made it dance like a bird
with nothing better to do.
It felt pure.
A long awaited reunion.
Just me and the cone of wind
blinking with languid movement
like the eye of something colossal
and invisible.

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Ω

When the rest of him goes, 
what will people think of my grief? 
Should I rage loud and large
like a mindless animal in a bear-trap?
Wail and beat my chest over my heart?
Go completely off the rails?
Eat my fill and more, eat enough for two?
When all else fails I’ll write poems.
Intricately oversimplified containers,
bubble-thin, half-full of whispers and salt.
Half-empty, too, but never enough to contain
the littlest toe of my grief 
and yet unthinkable that I could stomach 
not writing them.
He’s not even dead as I grieve the kidney 
the cancer took cell by cell.
The small but load-bearing vertebrae. 
The voice wiped by radiation that came back 
a mere whisper. When the rest of him goes 
I’ll know I didn’t pray the right words 
or enough of them. The faith I never had
will grow bottomless, the miracles too little, 
too late. The wishing and dreaming
will all have been in vain and all that will remain
will be these poems that are all about me.

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