The Agèd Hands of Time have reached yet another
toll of the bell.

12 years have passed since I’ve last seen her in this life.
Distance and sickness in our being had robbed us both
of streams of time which passed like a long cold winter
into her death. These lost memories often create over-
exposed and superimposed photo negatives of imaginary
frames of time I desperately imprint to hold tightly in my
heart and mind.

But I still hold tightly in memory to her soft voice on the
phone and pictures of split second frames of physical
time my sister would send me. Many people don’t even
have that.

In this life she loved to mother her three grown children
and flower garden as near as
she could to the end. It was
in her nature to nurture us--
her perennial children--
and to help make the move easier for her literal annual foster children plants taken
from a confined plastic existence to a deep soft warm bed of comfort.

Stamped on my mind is not the faded and worn, bruised
and torn image of her outward shell in the Trauma
Center at age 88, but the indelible inner and outward
image at age 38: a lovely young mama who tucked her
little boy in bed every night with a song and a prayer.
The little boy that is still alive in this man.

The Agèd Hands of Time have reached yet another
toll of the bell.

You don't give a glass of water
  To a drowning man
And you don't throw a thirsty man  
  Into the deep blue sea

Yet I drank deep of that glass
  Though my lungs were full of water
And thanked you for the refreshing swim
  As I gulped the briny down.

When she falls into sleep
Beside me every night,
I'm often haunted by
All the promises I made decades ago.
So easy to make when
Dark feelings were out of sight.
Since then I’ve broken
The locks on almost every door.

In newlywed bliss she was
Sleeping next to me one night.
Still in that distant land
She suddenly sat-up
On the edge of the bed
With her back facing me,  
Looking into the dark closet
Next to her side of the bed.
She called out my name several times.  

Already awake, I answered,
"What’s wrong?"

With back still turned,  
She answered,
"I’m not talking to you,
I’m talking to the other Danny."

As in a darkened closet
My darker-half was first revealed.
My love and I were newlyweds, but
In one year was the uniting of the pair.

Through all these years,
She has sensed with empathy
My loss of peace and spirit
And at least tries to fill-up
The deep, dark empty spaces
That are in the many chambers
Of my damaged heart and soul.

Only this depth of Love can,
In its ineffable heat, melt
Away all traces of impurity,
If you let it.
I have learned to let it.