Postscript to the Dead

I press my ear to the wind,
hear you walk between raindrops,
dance with the living dead.

I have refused to think about you
all these years until now;
settling into your den chair
hair still damp from the frost,
oblivious to that fist already seizing
your heart, choking life's passageway.

How I mourned you.

I am no longer the girl woman
who once scribbled love notes for your pocket,
wrote you bad poetry, told you my dreams,
the child woman who didn't know
your age carried you places
it would take me until now to discover.

I have grown older-
older than you during our time.

Will you sing me psalms, hymns
of praise, lullabies of love,
or will you hide behind a fallen leaf
until my curiosity wanes?

Know that I loved you as spring
loves the winter for reminding it to rejoice
in wild magnificent bloom while the sun
still flies high off the horizon.

©Pris Campbell
2003

Graphic by Pris Campbell from photo supplied
   by Mosaad Ghoneim

Published in Verse Libre 2004

This poem didn't place in the Jan 2004 Poetry Board League Competitions, but it did rate mention by Janet Buck, the month's judge:

Though the poem "Postscript to the Dead" [Pris Campbell of Lotus Blooms] didn't end up in the top three, I found the manner in which the poet culled lessons from the grief of lost love to be very moving. The concept of the dead hiding behind a fallen leaf was an apt articulation of how cloying sorrow can be. It was very encouraging to read such thought-provoking and well-crafted entry

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