Poem - Permanence
I started this poem in mid-August shortly after I wrote "The Doggerel Days of Summer." I worked on it almost daily with small revisions here and there for a month. I still feel like it might have expanded further somehow, but I just didn't know what else to do with it after awhile. As Paul Valéry observed, "A poem is never finished, only abandoned." So here is my abandoned poem:
Permanence
The ones we lose, go in a flash
From with, to without, to beyond our ken
They come back though, in fact
Not toward us, but within
Nor the same as what we lacked
The boomerang is imperfect
For they've traversed another shore
And return only to reflect
The light of memory before
There's no more to expect
A silence when we wished for speech
A few sweet words would do
But to us their words cannot reach
Nor to them ours, it matters not how true
The great unknown divides, not to be breached
While we who remain yet
For whom the world revolves
Must onward go, but cannot let
Our loved ones wholly to dissolve
For two souls met can't be unmet
At length we lack the will to weep
Rare moments yet we do, without relief
We keep what's left for us to keep
From all time's scattered trees, a leaf
Til joining them in distant sleep.
(September 9, 2016)