Loss

It is raining. It is a summer rain, soft with the swarm of heat, hard with the hiss of mosquitoes.

This day the weeds will get a break. No one will pull them. No one will dig them up. They will drink and drink and drink. They will overtake whole gardens. They will encroach the flowers and the herbs and the fine green grass.

They will unwittingly strangle daisies and lavender, Sweet William and sage.

A fellow writer, who appreciated the magic of poetry and the joy of fiction, died of cancer on June 29th. Today is the viewing. Today it is raining.

I knew David and his wife, Sarah, through writing groups. I remember an event in Canton, Ohio, where we read our work with a few other poets, and Dave's wife played the flute between sets, along with a friend on clarinet.

It is hard to let go, hardest of all to know each day arrives dragging loss more near. We fight it. We deny it.

But loss will come to us, one way or another. It will bite us when we are sleeping. It will sneak through the windows when we wake.

Poetry is a way for a poet to reach a hand across time to a stranger, a way of saying we are alone but we are not alone. We are connected, even as we separate, even as we part.

May this lover of language rest in peace, and may his family find comfort in the words he left behind.