Neanderthals

 

It was fun when you were alive

and we would laugh together

about men being Neanderthals.

You should see what is going on now.

Well, of course you see it from your view

on the other side.

You do send signals- when light flickers off a hummingbird’s buzzing green wings

just as I lift my head to glance out the window.

And on my recent solitary sojourn to a place

you would surely have adored,

did you feel the intense vastness of mystic water underneath the orange heat?

I did see your reflection in the dolphin’s soft splash amidst a deepening evening at the canal

and with a quickening, a pang, I thought about uncertainty, the irony of

our private language.

And I only wept once at the thought that both of you had gone

home to the angels.

Even the dogs died that year. I was out of my mind over the cold abruptness of it all.

I winced at what most certainly was the dark secret you hinted at,

but I was too much of a cave girl to understand.

 

Journal prompt: write about losing a friend or relative to death. How do you, as a journal keeper, deal with death and dying? What images come to mind when you think of your loved ones who have crossed over.

This poem is in honor of my BFF (and her husband) who died in 1998.