YESTERDAY’S PROMISE
What flows
In the marrow of winter’s cold bones
Flows in your own
Veins of mystery
Move the spirit
In a flood through your body
As you feel the pulse of blood surge
Remembering love
There’s more that you forget
The table you set with your kid
While the dog hid in a corner beneath a chair
All the times you changed your look
New clothes, new hair
All the times you did not know what to wear
None of that matters
Now
All those empty places
You filled with the faces you could
Count on to be there
Now
There are less and less to hold you
To reach you
To make you care how you look
How I miss you
Or the idea of you
Or the idea of myself with you
My heart moving the feeling through me
Through the jugular
Until I’m reeling with memories
And the lack of them
The attack of them
This is a hard time of year
Even the sparrow wants to hide
To disappear
As if a part of the trees
Increasing
The grief that no one sees
The invisible sting
Of an innocent breeze
Of surprise
I see myself through your eyes
And pause to consider
The immutable gift of time-wise ways
To heal all wounds
I climb to see
The sunset stain the sky
A bloodless miracle
That defies all sorrow
Feel the loss flow
Outward for a while
Borrow nature’s wisdom
Burn the fear
And smile tears
Into tomorrow
©2020 Julie Flanders
Photo Credit Casey Horner
October Process 