Autumn, with her wind like music to my heart,
recalls tender days of broken perfection
when I turned to you in desperation.

Your only gift to me an abiding presence in my pain,
and it was a more magnanimous gift than any
another has blessed me with to date.

Life took you early, and I felt I had been robbed
of the only human representation of love
I had known. And I broke open.

I lay down crying at remembered loss, but awoke,
your smile warming me from beyond the stars,
and heard you whisper, “Let it be as it is.”

In the dream that was a joyous glimpse of past reality,
you told me to become an instrument of peace,
to let God play through the holes in my life.

You showed me my life was a song, broken open
for the world to see, and the Spirit the very breath
of every note that rings through me.