Epitaph

Forever I will call her name
Until I’m granted peace in death,
My love will always be the same-
The sound may be my dying breath.

But only silence now is heard
And that is how these things must stay.
There is no God to hear a word
When I’m a man who has to pray.

Why hunger was the gift to me?
Why pain should be my daily bread?
Why was I teased by ecstasy
To find it all was in my head?

So obvious, the waste in pain-
Two lovers ending up alone.
But that’s the way it will remain.
I know she’ll never write or phone.

The memories of time and place,
The words she said that I believed,
The way it felt to see her face,
My epitaph, “I loved, I grieved.”

John H. Bidwell