Karen I think of you
pretending I know what your face looks like
ashen and sun-lit that day his plane
did not reach its destination
you knew
in that instinctive way
the weigh and measure of
incalculable things
felt twisted in our gut
like a wrung towel
retaining pressure
he was a man of air and Africa
the painted land
reaching like a hennaed bride
across plain and prairie
you can smell freedom
where we all began
born of clay and rain
growing to the rhythm of
dovetail butterflies gathering
their meal of date palm and black mangrove
yellowwood and senegalia groves leading
the mosaic paths of animals
honey bees and cicadas
drone air with song of nectar and molting
impala with their great dipped ink horns
slender heat parched bodies eyeing crest
for hyena or aardwolf staring predator
while sable antelope merge
their burgundy brown into
baked fecund earth
staring at skies for sign of rain
as you
look upward
seeing in your minds eye
his falling plane
imagine in urgent moment
greatest pain
all the years ahead you will
be without him
is death, you wonder
more merciful than life?
capturing the heart
at its perfect balance
where like a flower
you can stoop to preserve
its potency
no mind
it is the prayer of days ahead
rigid and unmoving in their sorrow
where you hold your face expressionless
howling in your mirror when all have left
and the monkey chatter
the smell of him everywhere
talking ghosts of touch, reaching, reaching out
you pretend, you submerge in that
twilight of denial and mad hope
staying long after death, the last visitor to leave
the funeral