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Anniversary Blues

O to fade! To pass! To rest! To die! To ponder, to listen and not to bode - you were as a thresher to the chaff like the driven wind that winnowed. The thunderclap of Tawhiri raging silence not a loving fool’s complaint, nor portend for whom the bell tolls when the echoes of time grow faint My heart alas divided against itself knows not what to say or what to feel, and with ponderous words recited I return your resting place to kneel. Some final absolutions shared alone - cold black rain upon my brow and cuff. Judge not a froward son - I am who I am, and have been judged enough We are but the quick and the dead, and just or unjust no keeper of time. O tell, what sin was imputed to you? What concealed divine law or crime? And what burden so dark the lamps of Heaven and Earth burn less bright? I ask do we in this realm find peace or is death’s victory our only respite? Only in beds of posthumous sleep will end my unspoken confessions. Nay, I no longer exhume the past - it rebukes all my searching questions. From umbilical dawn to end of days I failed you - I added unto your woe. In life and death there comes a time when to hold on and when to let go May your life and times early passed live on in the heart that lives in me, for in all the silent screams below is my own howl in my own vanity. As I pen my verse the charcoal sky again falls softly upon a distant knell - no loss, no sorrow, no love unwept can unring that fearful tolling bell Written: July 1991

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Date: 10/12/2023 2:59:00 PM
Lovely and profound message!
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