Absentia

An eerie silence lingers in this home,

Some strands of hair left tangled in your comb –

The bed unmade, some dishes in the sink-

Without you I’ve forgotten how to think.

The sounds I hear will never be your voice.

What’s gone could not be given up by choice-

It’s just somehow the way things have to be,

And all so fast it’s catching up with me.

This silence, of the music that you made-

The happy memories that start to fade

Like winter’s blanket hiding all the land

‘Till I can’t see. I just don’t understand.

I Google you, don’t laugh, I am not proud.

In grief all desperation is allowed.

There’s not a place on earth you can be found.

I just can not believe you’re not around.

This vacancy, a void that can’t be filled-

Yet nature’s way, I know our lives are tilled-

Like soil, we’re overturned so life may grow-

But without you, I didn’t want to know.

I do somehow; it has to be this way-

No matter what we feel or what we say-

The stages of a rocket give and fall-

So future generations have it all.

John H. Bidwell