Somebody's Gone
{This one is really best read aloud}
Somebody's gone in the night
And she will not come again
Her necklaces hang from the mirror still:
Amber beads and abalone shell
This cowry on its silver chain
That lay at her breast for years
—So we make beauty from what once was alive
Somebody's gone in the night
And she will not come again
Her photo smiles from the old pine chest
She found discarded in the coal-house
Stripped away the yellowing paint, replaced
Cracked plastic handles with new brass
Waxed and buffed the wood to an antique shine
—So she made beauty from what once was unloved
Somebody's gone in the night
And she will not come again
All future time spreads endless beneath the sky
And she is not in it
Yet the world is touched in every detail
By her hand, by her thought
I measure my worth most in her love for me
And measure hers in the ways she taught me to see
—So she made beauty from what once was unknown
Somebody's gone in the night
And she will not come again
—Only her beauty, the beauty she lived, remains
Loss
White bracts of bougainvillea drop
Gently to the lawn after the rain, and sadness
Fills me, unexpectedly. By now my love's three
Thousand miles away, she gazes rapt at the
Harsh sunlit deserts of the Silk Road
While I sit surrounded by ripening pomegranates
And prayer flags. But this pain springs from another
Separation, one not healed by such trivial arrangements
As a long-haul flight and the anticipated happy reunion.
