Fall Farewell
We walked that fall day
looking at the leaves,
we talked that day;
Nature, you, and me.
“The leaves are so beautiful,”
I said, as we communed together,
“It’s Nature’s last farewell,” you said,
Before the dying weather.”
“Life is like the leaves, I think,”
You said, almost too softly to hear.
“It has its most beautiful moment,
When it knows that death is near.”
“Too bad it’s not the same,
for people,” I replied.
You stopped, and turned, and took my arms,
And looked into my eyes.
“Sometimes, perhaps, it just might be,”
You whispered to the wind.
“Am I beautiful now?” you asked.
As we resumed our walk again.
###
And then, that night you slipped from life—
To your immortal end.
And still, to me, your beauty lasts,
my dear Forever Friend!
That Last Morning
I remember kissing Laura good-bye
before I left for services that Easter Sunday.
Over the last week I had watched
Her daily diminishment – the
constant leaking out of her fervent vitality
onto the pain-soaked sheets of her bed.
I still believed God would heal her,
but she taught me a little more about
Death each day
as she fell further and further away from me
while remaining there in the darkened room.
That morning, her eyes still held the
Light of Life,
but her body had already surrendered to the cancer,
and I think she knew that she would no longer
be there, in that bed, when I returned
from the church where I celebrated the
resurrection of the Lord.
She asked me to kiss her,
promising she would see me
in the morning.
I thought she was only mixed up
about the time of day at the time.
Now I think she was talking
about that blessed morning when I will
see her again – that
Blessed Easter morning
in the future.
The Weight of Her Soul
In the end,
she weighed no more than a thought —
A dream —
Yet there was a warm
solid weight to her too;
a smoothness of flesh
and scent of hair
that was unique to her.
I held her in my arms
and kissed her —
sharing her last breath.
I felt her go;
leaving me for realms eternal,
the land of poems and dreams.
It has been many years now;
yet I still feel the
weightless solidity of her soul
in my arms,
as it was in the moment
she left me.
* * *
Paul Jackson is a writer, a teacher, and old as the hills. He and Laura married, and 9 and a half weeks later Laura died of cancer.
Paul also writes fiction and non-fiction.
