In Good Company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

This poem first appeared on the blog in 2014.

Regular readers will know that I believe in the existence of ghosts in the nicest possible way. (There are unwelcome ghosts, too, of course, but they are of no concern in this particular poem.)

We may be slaves to time in this life, but remembrance and the posthumous conscious from which it springs are life forces in another dimension altogether; where time and personal space unite to cross frontiers we can but imagine ... until it is our time, too, to cross to that proverbial 'other side'. 

IN GOOD COMPANY

I went to your grave

on Easter day, a longing in the heart

to be near, as once we were

I knelt, unable to pray,

laid a bouquet of flowers at the stone,

glad to stay …

Someone wished me Peace,

said pain would pass and hurt grow less,

that you’d left but briefly,

but that’s not what I wanted

to hear, just to be with you once more

as once we were

                 

A tugging at my sleeve,

but I wept, and would not, could not

leave without you;

gently now, lifting my face

to the sky, showing aspects of our history

like a home movie;

easy then to rise and turn away

from a stone and flowers, ours the gift

of eternity ...

Walking hand in hand

through a cemetery, you and I, content

to be in good company

Copyright R. N. Taber 2002; 2014

[Note: Poem and title slightly revised (2014) from an earlier version that appears in First Person Plural by R N Taber, Assembly Books, 2002.]