Goodbye by Camden Chaffee

Goodbye

His wheelchair sat
unaccompanied and silent,
and death lingered in the air
like that profound smell
of a coming autumn.

“We’ve boxed up his things for you,”
the nurse said.
“So you wouldn’t have to.”

Now he lay
in a cool ground
clothed by the world he made,
waiting to be resurrected
in meditation and sweet evocation.

Of What is There to Come?

The eyes of diamonds,
had turned to coal.

And the pillar of our existence was removed.

A bittersweet dawn came to follow.

The ash of what was
silently stained my hands,
killing a little bit
of who I am.

But death shall not offer a separation
of a life lived, a life forgotten,
of a mourning risen,
of a teardrop in the October rain.

In the utterance of a final word,
in all the things left untold,

there is somehow hope.

“We will all be surprised,” she said

as she closed her eyes,
ready to begin her journey

to a new world.

Where do they go?

I knew it was coming -
the day you’d walk free,
unchained from a life that tethered

But where are you now?
That’s what I’d like to know

The lack of concreteness,
the lack of an answer from God,

That’s what kills
my weeping body
and burns my soul