Of Some Far Off Autumn Morning (a fractured prayer)

your ghost came to me in dreams

still young and confused
and asked me why I was gone

I said I looked into the future
and didn't find you there

I looked and looked
in the rocking and the creaking
of our mother's armchair
where your hair once shone

like a mat of gold stuff
and I couldn't find you there

and now all my days all my days
don't contain you

and I can't answer
and I can't not

and this is me forever
clutching at the last wisps of you
filled with this failure
of not standing firm
against that awful tide
that I saw coming
and that I too became

and it's Autumn now
and you won't be there
in caravans and campfires
and the orchard's low glides

you are a hole in the air
that no nature abhors
that nature elides

and I wish you would sleep
and I wish you would not sleep

little lost friend
not even a peep
.
.
.