The Loss

The Loss

We expect waves to froth and vanish;
that is the way of the whale road.
But the roads on which we travel we count the rails as strong, sure, straight — unswerving they take us in a known direction.

We know how sentences end but we count on the commas to spin out our tale, and relish even a semicolon as that offer of tomorrow.

Our world directions matter; things should come before other things, places before other places, events before other events.
Believing in the logic of nature we resist the chaos variable.

We are blind to it even as it weaves its way into the fabric of our perceptions.
As that absence interrupts a day and cancels out our bright hope,

That hope froths and then vanishes, leaving a dark where once there was logic, order — the ordinary sequence of becoming and being.

And the landscape of your world is shadowed by his sun.
That bright and shining boy who laughed. And then left.

Dedicated to my colleague on the loss of his son