Even after we've lost someone, we keep finding little pieces of them in the back of the cupboard at dusk or in the leaves on a Saturday afternoon. With or without a physical remembrance, a lock of hair, a ring, a watch, or a photo, the dead arise unbidden in our thoughts. We heal and move on, they may fade but their outline is left in the plaster.
Kit RMP is a fellow poet who sometimes posts for The Grieving Room.
Her latest diary there moved me to write this poem and I posted it as a comment.
For Kit:
Eyes Like Mine Under Cedars
Out on the edge of my head
linger voices, scents,
shirt-tails of air.
Inside my eyelids, a negative image
burnt into the white space, one freckled face
fringed with blonde hair and menthol smoke.
Another hawk-nosed man,
kissing the petite woman with
eyes like mine under the cedars.
Dancing a polka in my dreams,
laughing with, aching for,
loving them still.
Mama, Papa, Brother all gone,
still here, now, we are
all with me, always.
Atoms of ourselves slip away,
wind spit and scattered in the
wet places where seeds abide.
Life escapes, never flees,
retreating, returning
between a new set of ears.