For all those stricken, and taken,
Especially, J.J.E. (father and son), Susie, Maria and Bill

3 Conspiracies of Words
    Inspired by cancer



1.

In a flash of pure epiphany… (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)


In the spring of 1905, Albert Einstein theorized that time is relative to the observer…

Who was with you when that awful epiphany crashed down on you?
Where was I?
Was someone with you as much as someone could be,
when you learned of your new trajectory
your life circumscribed, officially truncated?

    “They told me I’d never work again”, she said.

   
I ask he how he was feeling. He said,

    “I’ve just been given a death sentence”.

Could I have served any purpose at all for you, when time transposed into
something only you could know
and I was left wondering
like so many others
left out
alone with these thoughts, and grief
as the world bifurcated again, leaving you away from us, over there?

I like to imagine you are watching us, steadfast in whatever there there is
watching, knowing,
and forgiving.






2.

The Vigil

Yes, I know now as you do
that the time for this has penetrated us
and we must do as we must
And that is wait, and make the wait
tolerable,
if not meaningful.

She awaits as we cannot,
the voice of the perfect void.

The perfect voice we cannot hear, but  await as if we understand,
pinned by memory
and the perfect voice of the duty that binds us
together
    Waiting





3.

Threnody

The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs
Tho’ much is taken, much abides;
…know that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek and not to yield…
Alfred Tennyson


Bright against the black sky
abides her promise
Strong in will her rejection to yield
yet yield in nobility
what is wholly and certainly worthy of her heart’s purpose
and only that.

You who know her know that,
and know when she yielded, she rose.

Who would not yield to love?
Who among us has not abdicated our chance
and, by refusing, give strength to the thief of compassion,
life, and vision?

Ulysses rose from hell in Florence, 1320,
to declaim his eternal will.
You know what she rose above
and know she rises still.

In our hearts, she rises still