the fog death builds

the presence of an absence

to get to some mountains

you must pass through large foothills,

foothills that block you from the reason that pulls you forward,

that’s what it’s like now with the loss of dear Ann,

I’m not quite all there to realize, with full attention,

that she is lost to us,

arrangements, the dutiful logistics of 

people, 

food, 

messages

catch us up in them,

and it’s right, 

and good, 

and necessary

to fill the front of our consciousness

with all that needs doing,

as I move past the frenzy, and the avoidance,

before me I see glimpses of what is there,

and yet the reality of the loss 

is more accurately the presence of an absence,

she’s not there to touch with hug or word any more,

and she’s only there to reach back to us in memory’s misty touches

where the glory of the light within her life

still slips through the fog

that death slowly and surely builds between us and her.

by Henry H. Walker

June 5, ’14