Judging my safety
Like collapsing sandcastles
Rough-built at high tide

Feeble foundations
Based on assumptions
Freak waves waiting

Only recently
I learnt that not everyone
Always feels afraid

Turn gently inward
To ask whether I’m okay
Quietly observe

The body holds the answers
Truer than the pliant mind

She slipped away with no goodbye
No parting gasp or widened eye
One heartbeat she was here, then she was gone.

I didn’t know it was the day
When she would gently drift away-
The nurses said that time was down the road.

For many hours I’d held her  hand
And when I could no longer stand
I sat nearby to read a magazine.

I cannot say with certainty
The moment that her soul leapt free
I feel ashamed and live with secret guilt.

I never should have touched that book
It robbed me of a final look
That might have told me she was on her way.

I had to wait til Laura came
And here her call my Mother’s name
And cry out, O my God - I think she’s gone.

I tell myself it was Mom’s will
To slip away when all was still
But yet I should have stood there at her side.

I might have sensed her spirit’s flight
Or seen some otherworldly light
Instead I idly looked at wedding gowns,

I feel I didn’t make the grade
And ever since that time I’ve prayed
That she’ll forgive the lapse and love me still.

Wherever she is dancing now
I hope she realizes how
My love is wrapped around her like a crown.

And as she starts eternity
With body new and spirit free
I hope she knows her heart lives on in me.

I think about her all the while
Sometimes with tear-sometimes with smile
But she walks closer by me than before.
  
The wisdom that she shared with me-
The training in the way to be
Are part and parcel of my very soul.

I’ll always be a part of her
Through any change that may occur
My love and fond remembrance will not fade.

So though she left without goodbye
To claim her mansion in the sky
I know she’ll save a corner there for me.

And come that future afternoon
Maybe distant, maybe soon,
I’ll hold her hand in greeting, not farewell.

And she will say she overlooked
My sitting down with bridal book
And that she knows I did the best I could.

She knew the measure of my love
And as she joined the realms above
Considered me to be her good girl still.

Then all the pain I’ve hid inside
Will disappear and I can glide
Into my own eternity at peace.          
                ljm

I wrote a poem

I wrote it twice

Seeking words expression

Clouds roll in

My shadow hides

Exposing my depression

Pressure mounts

Weight so intense

No strength to set me free

Shallow breath

A whisper utters

Is this the end of me

Give me a dream,
A haunting place
Where fires are alight
Raging flames
In the dead of night.
Dark skies,
With stars burning bright
Spirals of dust so far away.
Whisper to me,
Of cosmic grains
Carrying us on moonlight.
Light a candle tonight,
Wish the ancestors well,
Feed the ghosts,
Lift the veil of the bride
Here comes the souls
Marching side by side,
Good battles evil tonight.
Peer into the sky
We’re entering winter time.

The moonlit sky hovers
a dark and empty street
A night submerged with wonder
and stillness

In a blissful voice, the night sang
about a faraway land,
where the pastures danced
and summer was everlasting

Lustrous knights roam the land
and the goblins lurks in the shadow
Like the darkness I lay on
As my bones relish in the calm
of this wonderful night