Four Years Gone

google image

for Pup

I feel it coming,

this poem I will birth

on the fourth year of your passing
from this earth.

So close to tears, I realized, 
of course, it is you.
Just how much and how long
I would miss you,
back then I never knew.

Like a burrowing owl, 
you have lodged in my heart
like a prickle-burr that hurts
from which I do not want to part.
You live there, night and day,
in a corner labeled Grief.
From the missing 
and your-being-gone
there is no relief.

Ghost voices
whispering on the wind,
and wolf howls in my dreams,
you look right into my sad heart;
your wolf-eyes gleam.

The barn owl says to light the lamp
on the windowsill for you.
But how can you find me
when where I live 
was never home to you?

I'm homeless in the universe,
alone, without you
and I fear you're out there somewhere,
feeling homeless too.

Lead me back, wolf-spirit,

to the land we loved together.

I will walk there again
as we did in any weather.

When I can hear  the rhythm of 

the turning of the tides,

my spirit may still find a home
once more, where peace abides.
Maybe your ghost shadow
will accompany the hours
as I walk along forever beaches that,
for a time, were ours.

***

I went to bed and slept,

and then they came:

four beautiful, snowy white wolves
who already knew my name.

The first one came close,
oh! the beauty of her face!

pushed a friendly nose towards me,
as I stood still, accepting, 
but respectful of her space.

We were at the beach,

the wolves and I.

A visitation 

from the spirit-world of the not-alive,

and from deep in my spirit,

which needs both wolves

and ocean waves

to thrive,
because it has never been enough 
just to survive.

The barn owl called sleepily

in the early light to wake me.

Four white wolves live within me now,
never to forsake me.

And you?
big, black, laughing, hilarious
creature of the dawn? 
You live in my heart 
forever, now.

You are never 
fully gone.