Poem for Cassandra, September 18, 2013

Poem for Cassandra

        All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

        And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

                    -- Walt Whitman

At the end of another August,

maple leaves flutter

in a welcome breeze,

sighing shade in soft smiles

over the sidewalks,

over the mown lawns and gleaming dogs,

proud on the ends of their leashes,

over the neighbor

who pinches a last delicate rose

from its thorny stem,

over children who dive and swoop

across the grass

like sparrows,

still free

but smelling the hot start

of September

with its chalky classrooms,

their arithmetic drone

like the buzz

of a thousand bees.

In this drowsy comfort,

we might feel the shape

of your body’s absence --

a delicate silhouette,

a sudden shadow

in the shape of an angel,

slipping past overhead --

we might feel the shape of your absence

and shiver,

imagining the human things

you might now be doing …

Like reading a French novel

in your backyard,

and sipping a glass of iced tea,

or sitting at a table in a sunny café

in some foreign country

where time is a bit thicker

and words fall more slowly,

leaning forward to laugh

with a friend,

the sound rising up

like white wings,

so that the woman sitting by herself

next to the window

looks up at you

and smiles,

bathed in that light.

These dreams of you in your body

are beautiful and sad,

like the mellow end of summer

stretched in tree shadows

across our gardens --

but only for us,

still bound to a single time and place,

still tied

to the crushing wheel of time,

to loneliness and anger

and falling out of love,

to the inevitable disappointment

that collects as dust

on all of our human possessions.

You, after all,

are still beautiful

and never sad.  

You are everything

and everywhere

all at once –

You are silver and gold and rubies,

you are laughter

and velvet grass underfoot --

you are peony petals beaded with rain

and a whisper

that tickles the ear,

you are swans and dancers

and poets in parks,

you are rivers feeding the oceans,

and clouds shaped like goldfish,

you are snowfall glittering in cherry orchards,

and tulip bulbs

keeping their secrets

under February’s freeze.

You are your father’s smile,

your mother’s grace,

your sisters’ and brother’s clear eyes.

You are dreams and memories and songs

floating through our minds

like breath,

and you are the hands that have touched you,

and the spirits you’ve shaped –

You are the bricks and glass and mortar

in this building,

and you are the thousands

who will laugh and love

inside it –

You are the space above us

and the ground beneath us –

the very air contains you

and yet

you are free,

you exceed us,

like a million years of starlight

stretching forwards

and backwards --

the purest love

we can never

fully imagine.

                September 18, 2013

                Laurie MacDiarmid