Free

you are a bird
and birds 
do not stay

still
I bid you stay
for a moment

and you were
wild but stay
you did

and when
the beauty of
the sky called

you saw
you were meant
to fly

so I stretched out
long out on
the new ground

beneath you
to watch you soar
blessed and free

Loss: A poem

I wore your sweater

nearly every day for 3 years.

Believing your essence

was somehow

knit into the collar, the sleeves, the

oversized warmth of the

blue yarn.

That sweater saved me.

But death is death,

and you left,

and that is true,

that is real.

So many years ago.

You, my first true love,

my possibility, the one

with the power to christen or damn

me, could not stay.

 

You have so long

been gone,

and still there is

an unmovable motion,

an inconsolable, eradicable

loss.

 

If I could tell you one last thing:

I want to shed the garment.

Pin the grief to the collar, set

it free on the sleeve,  

untangle the weave

and bask naked in the

sun, or the cold if

I must, but yes.

 

I want to

let you go.