I wish I’d asked you
All these years ago
What a useless sentiment
How can we know it
Avoiding all that blunder

And the last time
I saw her as she drifted into sleep
My mind filled with longing
My heart filled with dust.  
All our dreams torn asunder

I couldn’t leave again
So she said, “I’ll go.”
Her heart reaching
Took a piece of me along
Borne in her stark wonder.

Into the face of nature
Faith like wishes missing God
She watches over the child
Knowing all right from wrong
Ready her box of thunder

Now I wait patiently
The woman she’ll never find
Years sift like leaves in memory
Raindrops glisten listening tilted
With the answers we left behind

May, December 2019