By Stephen Mead
Days go by. Time is flurries but there is no hurry in this snow. It goes over brambles and wild grape vines. This is the astonishing quiet I breathe and feel you through. I am like a fish bubbling up against ice, all thaws a ghost's opaqueness then transparency. Surely I remember how there was spring in your touch, the safest stream in which to traverse.
Funny, some thought it perilous, a nerve-journey, and your fear too big for handling. Mine might have been in the too-quick months of you heading towards death, but I hadn't time, will enough for anything but inhabiting that world of yours.
Generous—you let it become mine, giving access as child or brother. I played Hepburn to your Grant, growing past the trial by jigsaw of what a life ending may endure.
In me I've preserved all of that as the nights, the months fall same as this great snow.
We are in the hush, the lightness, the light until I can shed the rest and perhaps, as you, rise pure.
About the Author
Stephen Mead is a retired Civil Servant, having worked two decades for three state agencies. Before that his more personally fulfilling career was fifteen years in healthcare. Throughout all these day jobs he was able to find time for writing poetry/essays, and creating art. Occasionally he even got paid for this work. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall.