In your presence, we were
“Under the seams runs the pain”-Anne Carson
Though light may shy away from us when we cloak ourselves in grief,
you taught us much more,
between the sway of your stepping, tripping occasionally over your vision curtained by your unkempt locks
and your soft breathing belying your courage and your care
for it was you who knew that it was we who needed protecting
all along.
In your presence, we were
protected in the nesting nosing of that gorgeous heart
of fur and fearlessness
barking our way through the dark and
toward the light.
Though we have buried you along the side of the bucketing light
the sea and the waves, thousand-eyed and wind-in-the-ear,
your roots spread up and widen
the taxonomy of our love a question of algebra inside us.
We have, because of you, grown.
This is what you bequeathed us.
Grief as nourishment, fecund as dimpled light.
for: Imants and Linda
