to say goodbye

to say goodbye
is beyond my strength
a task so impossible
that I have fled my life
constantly inventing newness
in order not to possess anything
sufficiently permanent
to need to say goodbye one day...
to say goodbye
to a loved one
or a parent
or those people poised in friendship, who come and go
fading into my life and evaporating out of it
gracefully with no drama
they remain part of my daily imagination
and though their presence is no longer real
I dream of their lives
imagine how we might spend moments together
laughing and biding the time --
but I will never tell them goodbye,
if I feel it is time to move on,
so that we may know the finality of a good thing
come to its natural ending…

my grandmother is dying…

I pray daily for her deliverance
but cannot go to her bedside
to feel the coldness of her hand in mine
and remember thereafter how mine was so warm
and that she had become so frail
so unlike the images which look back at me
from pictures on the wall
where our togetherness is relived without tarnish
I can never say goodbye
and I can not either
stop to think that maybe someone
would wish that I could,
might express that need
having the right to a proper ending
for their own story





to say goodbye
20 january, 2006