Spring came early here, so much
so
that the tabebouias have already lost
their ecstasies of flame, yellow and pink
and purple blossoms scattered on the ground
or carried off on warm Gulf winds.
Gone too soon like you and your memory.
Those blossoms were once so
present in your loss, brother,
the yellow tree across the street
from mother’s on the day you died
almost vicious and obscene
burning on so gorgeously,
aflame most when you were most gone.
Our lives have endured to here,
more partial now in days
more difficult, the world’s arrears
ever worse, no bitter winter
but its warmth breeding an
early spring and who knows
what hot miasmal days ahead.
I had hoped the tabeouias
would keep in bloom to
your death-anniversary in April
but like memory they’ve ebbed
til only traces remain, a few
jots of pink or yellow on
this or that tree swaying on
the breeze, an infrequent
pluck of heart-strings
wondering what you’d be
up to now if you had lived.
Married? Working well?
Relocated here or nearer so?
I think we would have gotten
closer
emailing or using Skype,
sharing this or that bit of news
or just a good joke: How
good it would have been to
walk together as we seldom
did, twins separated by
age and a continent
delighted to find so many sames
between us despite all that,
same gait, same tenor of voice,
same height (almost), same
fragrant dissonance in the life,
earnest, growing forward,
trying to be decent, to love.
Yes, that would have been good
and perhaps we might have
been allotted more time to
get beyond so many things
we’d just begun: But then
who knows what else might
have come to you on the
next day or the next; how
saddened you might have been
by the long war overseas
or the lack of work
in photography or anywhere.
No saying that things might
have not gotten worse going
on for one or both of us,
grief for you changing me
in ways I still don’t quite grasp
but know have proved essential,
savoring more every day
and holding the beautiful
in my mind’s hands the way
you offered it—to heal,
to inhabit, to husband as
what deepens even in losing.
The pain of loss opened doors
I wouldn’t have gone through otherwise,
made me more a son and brother
than before, keeping more in touch,
reflecting so much how much family
is durable despite its losses,
the tabebouia trees bare yet kin
still to a fragrant memory
just beyond the dark outside
that’s ever further, later,
inconsequent to days
and fading from dreams.
I know that’s how grief of
death works in the heart – a
world-wide ache that shrinks
as its fades until, slowly, there’s
just a name on a marker somewhere
amid the rest, forgotten in
a generation or two til
not even the name’s on the breeze.
As you, so us: and maybe that’s a comfort
knowing that silence will become
our shared bourne, sealed back
together in time’s absence,
present in that place beyond living eyes
free to laugh and walk and talk again.
For now it's getting warmer
without the tabebouia bloom,
the light bright and brighter
everywhere you’re not in the room.
Photo by Timm.
