Poetry (Absence: Part 1)

(Finished June 29, 2021)

What is poetry

If you’re not here with me

I was left with no words to speak

Frame stone-cold, bones so weak

What is poetry

If you’re not here to sing with me

How can one write what one could only weep

Bliss so shallow, sorrow so deep

I once wrote to heal

But can’t put into words what I deny is real

I can’t see your absence eye-to-eye

And still dream of you as if it all were a lie

But if you were still here with me

You’d ask me about my poetry

To get a chance to dwell in the world I hide inside

Where all this lost love now resides

I knew that there was no escaping this grief

No matter how far I got lost in disbelief

Now as all verse is damp with tears

I admit that my greatest fear

Is to never be able to write for you again

Knowing that it was only you who truly did listen

Words no longer have any meaning

None of them know how to convey such mourning

And so, to me

Poetry could only be poetry

When you were here with me

When you are here with me

I wait for a day I could sing this to you, father.