though you left in April
I miss you most in November
it felt a cruel joke
to align death with tax day
and your mother’s birthday
but death and governments
must have their due
best to get it over in one fell swoop
and leave autumn as blessed relief
from the dominating of Sun’s motif
you entered into this moral coil
in the eleventh month
of the old chthonic gods
it seems quieter in the fall
and easier to hear the stirrings of roots
in stillness and empty
a time of letting go and surrender
to what is and what might come to be
sustained by the seeds
of what has come to pass
in that quiet i see the spot
where the daffodils grow
to the call of spring
and sometimes in snow
to cheer your hospital room
before a simple surgery
you were meant to wake from
but your body had other ideas
a twist in the path ahead
none of us saw coming
i betrayed myself and the
life of moderns when i said
it’s okay to let go
if it’s your time
if you’re done
and i lied and prophesied
when i said “i’ll be okay.”
entering my own autumn in April
staring down the long dark path
of a winter ahead
not knowing how far off spring lay
displaced from time, out of mind
in step with something else, syncopating
another cycle as the turn of the wheel
draws closer the next
yielding to the burgeoning life of spring
and drumbeat of winter’s breath
themes of fullness and emptiness
activity and receptivity
movement and rest
within the darkness an echo of light
within the light a seed of death
one within the other witnessed
the whole of renewal
while weaving and following threads
in a tapestry of eternity
reckoning with our place
in the lace of small shifting patterns
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