Sunset Through the Trees

Sunset Through the Trees / Oil on black canvas/ 8x10/ $120 including shipping

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I AM HEALING. I see it nearly every day, sometimes in big steps, sometimes small. And while I am glad for this - because, who wouldn't be? - there is part of me that feels a bit of sorrow about it. Does this make sense? In grieving Peter, in mourning him, I am close to him. Respectful of the life he led, the life we led together. I am with him. 

In healing, I am moving away. I am taking steps on my own. I am learning to live without him. I know this is necessary, and it is what I want, but in a way, I rue my burgeoning independence, my quickening heart, the delight I feel in new adventures, new ideas, new friends. 

I will continue to heal, I know, and to grow and prosper, and find my way in this world without him. I'll  probably never be entirely without sadness, and that is OK with me. That little bit of sadness is as much a link as the memories of joy, of love, and the sharing of our lives. 

***

Coda

You, Therefore

For Robert Philen

You are like me, you will die too, but not today:   

you, incommensurate, therefore the hours shine:   

if I say to you “To you I say,” you have not been   

set to music, or broadcast live on the ghost   

radio, may never be an oil painting or

Old Master’s charcoal sketch: you are

a concordance of person, number, voice,

and place, strawberries spread through your name   

as if it were budding shrubs, how you remind me   

of some spring, the waters as cool and clear

(late rain clings to your leaves, shaken by light wind),   

which is where you occur in grassy moonlight:   

and you are a lily, an aster, white trillium

or viburnum, by all rights mine, white star   

in the meadow sky, the snow still arriving

from its earthwards journeys, here where there is   

no snow (I dreamed the snow was you,

when there was snow), you are my right,

have come to be my night (your body takes on   

the dimensions of sleep, the shape of sleep   

becomes you): and you fall from the sky

with several flowers, words spill from your mouth

in waves, your lips taste like the sea, salt-sweet (trees   

and seas have flown away, I call it

loving you): home is nowhere, therefore you,   

a kind of dwell and welcome, song after all,   

and free of any eden we can name

- Reginald Shepherd