Sunday, August 7, 2011

summer is of endings


goodbyes


within the moment I begin to feel
tomorrows start to shake the sureness of today,
the comfortable rightness of our children and grandchildren with us
and the whirling realities that will soon spin them away,
undo me,

after my grandchildren fly off and away
I sit by the creek where they played,
and a spirit is gone, an animation no longer here,
to give each rock, each moment, a meaning
that tells a story that pulls me into it
as if I am a child just before bed,
captivated by what I am read,
and yet there are still stories here:
remembered, imagined, distant,
as if in a rear-view mirror while I speed forward,

summer, to me, is of endings,
goodbyes follow goodbyes,
I am still in a story
in which other characters leave
one after the other,
each goodbye a loss, a sadness,
a cleansing so that I can be ready
for new chapter after chapter to begin anew.

by Henry Walker
August 6, ’11

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