For Dan

I don’t know how to say goodbye to you my dearest

and I don’t know how to greet a life without you.

Dew fogs the grass as the pink light of sunrise

floods through the windows.

I listen for the sounds of you in this still morning

the quiet of your absence surrounding me.

You are everywhere and nowhere,

waiting in still and silent moments, patient with the

futile busyness that keeps my pain at bay.

My sweet and gentle boy,

how we laughed and cried together at the absurdities

and cruelties of your life,

and at the frailties of your human keepers.

In weaker moments I beg you to return to me,

selfish, I know my darling, to ask

knowing the brutality of your final days with us,

the torment and tumult of those precious hours.

And still, you come to me, like a breath, like a pulse,

as the sighs and tears move through me

and I remember how you protected me

your facile, fragile mother,

and let me sleep beside you, let me hold you one last time

in the clinical light of the hospital monitors.