Catechism

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Catechism

What is the signal in the rain?
That a third Spring is coming.

What opened the void
that Spring leaves behind?
A simple phone call: “John is gone.”

Is three years enough to cancel the call?
Long enough to abstract the grief
from the April of his going.

What is now the sum of the grief?
That there was a time before he lived
and now a time after.

How is this next April to be borne?
Where it finds me, I will abide.

Catechism



Is three years long enough?

Time enough to abstract the grief

from the April of your going



What is the sum of the abstraction?

There was a time before you lived

and now a time after.



How will this third April be borne?

I will carry the answer

like a foundling from the moon.









Catechism







Spring is coming,



I can feel it in the rain.



Is three years long enough



to abstract the grief



from the April of your going?







The phone call was simple,



“John is gone” said my daughter



and my question, “Gone where?”



was my startled response.



Even now it’s a question



no one can answer.







There was a time before you lived



and now a time after.



There’s nothing else to conclude



but that April is coming



like a man on the moon.