Almost

 I see you everywhere, everyday.

Your hair, your smile, the way

you walk I hear you talking

 just beyond the scope of senses.

Whispering grief relentless.

It's just

I see you everywhere, everyday 

in passing cars too far away

for seeing to be certainty.

That it was you. I’m never sure. 

I know it makes me miss you more

for

I see you everywhere, everyday.

Smoke curling over ashtray

warm. Your jacket cold, unworn.

You took this journey defenceless.

Cumulonimbus portentous.

but

I see you everywhere, everyday.

Shoulders disappear through doorways 

in the distance. My resistance 

to reality acceptance strengthens 

Credence of multidimensions

because 

I see you everywhere, everyday.

It's weirdish hide and seek we play.

Between these worlds unseen

I slip and slide to find some comfort

but remain with pain encumbered.

Man,

I see you everywhere, everyday.

Gratitude’s debts remain unpaid

immured and uninsured

but mutual as our own destruction 

despite heroic harm obstruction.

Now,

I see you everywhere, everyday.

I hear the words you cannot say

mostly evoked by echoes ghostly.

You'll never forget, always forgive

and in the other timeline live

End of the End

 Another one gone.

Another three songs 

poisoned by emotional association.

It's a strange wave that breaks when they shoulder that box.

Raw, real and final.

The ritual is primal.

Elegies and eulogies hang 

as a forlorn fog, a longing 

we would call nostalgia

if it weren't so immediate.

So overwhelming.

Collectors

Some people collect stamps.
Some people collect coins.
Some people make air fix models so well
You can barely see the joins.

Some people collect conquests.
Some people collect scars.
Some people collect experiences
during which they see stars.

I've got a new collection,
and not through conscious act.
It's been kind of foisted on me and
I'd rather give it back.
I'll put it in an album,
Neat, protected, labelled, proud
private slice of all the lives
that used to be around.
Past tense.
You see it's all the funeral cards
with photos and songs and poems.
It's hard
to watch the collection grow.
I have no control
over this.
It's not like pokemon cards or vintage picture discs.
They're all limited editions,
all one off works of art.
All threads in one rich tapestry
of which we're just one part.
And the pattern that they weave glistens
Crystallised in wisdom.
Passed through timely advice
and an ear willing to listen.
It's not like I can display it.
For flat living it's highly compatible.
For the major part of it,
It's completely intangible.
The cards are merely a symbol:
A trinket in place of a jewel.
One hydrogen atom representing
Each universe of you.
So I'll put them in an album,
neat, protected,  labelled,  proud
and share them with the enthusiasm
of the traction engine crowd.

Some people collect conquests.
Some people collect scars.
Some people collect experiences
during which they see stars.

Some people collect stamps.
Some people collect coins.
Some people mend their hearts so well
You can barely see the joins. 

Magpie

All week long I saw them.

Those portents gleaming, squawking,

hopping, cocked head, taunting,

“Sorrow! Sorrow!”; giving warning.

Well dressed spectres perching trite

on ghoulish glamour of foresight

from watchful beads. Their message might

be overlooked, taken light

-ly. I mistook their solo missions

as personally guided acts of attrition

and didn’t realize what they were bringing

was the precious gift of premonition.

Now I replay my memories and lessons impart

-ed by you, my husband’s family’s matriarch.

Luminous lady now journeying in to dark

with no map or signs. No official chart.

Are those monochromatic couriers guiding

the Valkyries with whom you’re riding?

Battles corporeal you fought inspiring

-ly with bravery unretiring.

If the piebald post can pass their notes from Future into Past

Can missives slip between the cracks of the Living and the Passed?

And if only one can get through to you

out of the endless many

let it be this truth you’ve heard a million times:

“Ciao, Tesoro. Ti voglio bene”.

In memoriam of Luciana Pavia. 4th October 1940 - 20th January 2015