Only the little slice of night between turning

out the light and actual sleep grant some

sense of the reality of your death.

In the Christian world view I am to

celebrate the triumph of your march

from life support to respiratory arrest.

I cut my self on a stained glass tableau:

Your last breath.

I am absent and bleeding.

In that long minute I stood at the altar of your

God, felt his glory,

was awed and tiny, once again receiving

the blessing of cool robes and eloquence.

The divine metaphor, the universal theme.

I succumb to ritual,

finding comfort in the repetition and

completion of the flame melting wax,

the silence and the echoes sanctified,

on my knees in rapturous grief.

Lord, now let thy servant depart in peace.

You were going home, you said

insistent on Tuesday, although that meant

forgoing one last look at the

fruit of your labors. Dear father

the furious vision that drove you

from me

compels me.

I am compelled to scratch an ancient

symbol in my flesh, compelled

to rethink the cross and

rescue you from martyrdom.

You never loved the holy, always

embraced the dirt on calloused, loving feet,

seduced by human weakness and maddening redemption,

flying in the face of dirty feet and frail desires.

Black crows fly up from the stark fields, an

ocean moves exquisite limbs to embrace

the ragged shore. Here are my feet, my legs,

my hair in the wind, and I know

I’m alive.

They say I have your eyes.

Had I shivered at the graveside,

felt the soil, perhaps I would believe.

No. The joke still plays at the

corners of you mouth, your merry eyes

weaving and dancing.

We are walking arm in arm.

You see, you’re still planting tatties,

speaking a lilting truth,

arrogant in the caricature of your own importance.

And even as you are returned to your

Father, dust to dust, so I

come back to you

again and again and again.

I will not build an altar, will not

sanctify your long absence with

blind ritual, will not defame

your church with hollow repetition.

I’ll see your face somewhere and

that stab will jolt me into reverie

because now there is a finite amount of you.

You are contained.

You are released in lonely chimes and

snatches of melody.

It’s too early to predict my redemption.

I cannot purge on loss, cannot ascend

through raw and wrenching

grief.

And even as your death carves

knowledge in my face, I remember,

Always anchored to you,

born in the same sun, like you

incapable of following through.

Rejoicing in the impermanence of joy.