An Elegy of Sky for Paula

U

For this week's poem we were to write a poem of release.  Since today is my recently lost friend Paula's birthday, I couldn't help but write a poem for her today especially when I saw how incredible the sky was tonight.  Here is a poem that remembers her through the landscape she loved.

An Elegy of Sky
for Paula

These winter days we are told to repair
ourselves; to stuff whatever it takes
into the cracks that open up from us:
sand, feathers, hot, melted gold. Or, to live
with that space even as it is still opening
and let whatever force--light or dark--shine in.

Yours was such a simple ceremony:
thin line dug into rocky sand, handful
of red flowers scattered like joy or sorrow,
then the ashes: what clouds, what rises,
what will meet the decision (that cold shock) of sea.

The sky opened up today and revealed
through furrows of cathedral clouds
a thick, bright shaft of light pouring from
the unknown above down to the valley floor.

As I drove down into it, what opened up in me were questions.

Can we fill the cracks that open in us?
Or, do we let them breath the air and sea?