Zuri After Xena

I wonder what Zuri must feel,
As she looks at your bed;
Pauses briefly –
Then walks on ahead.

Do dogs sense absence,
Know loss, feel grief?
For sure, when I come home,
She softens in relief.

So does your scent linger,
After a fortnight of loss?
It must…or am I just
Displacing remorse?

She moves more quietly now.
Yet her love is clear:
It doesn’t understand space –
Dead, alive, there, here.

My eyes well up less now,
Though the heart still kneels;
Longing lives on in Zuri;
Through her, my heart feels.

I Was Loved

Are you in those ashes?
Were you burning in the pyre?
Can water take your essence?
Did your love submit to the fire?

As your body burnt I watched;
I could see the cancer still fight;
But wasn’t it you who stood shaking
And loved and played each night?

Who knew that night in May,
When I opened the door of that crate,
You’d make my family complete
And staunchly become my fate?

Your brother I loved;
I called him my first born son;
But how you took over the house –
How you made us run.

You ran too,
even when your limbs said no –
Your eyes shone bright,
Even when I was letting you go.

My love burnt with you in flames,
As it did with each who died before,
And I don’t know if it’s right to say:
But I will always have room for more.

Most don’t understand
How very large love can truly be:
The more it hurts the more it grows –
It bears outward to infinity.

Thank you, all of my children,
I may have shared a few years with you,
But you taught me about life and death
And to cope with a love so very true.

And though now my heart burns still,
Long after your ashes have grown cold,
And pain is a part of my life’s story
They’ll say I was loved when my tale is told.

Goodnight

I sit by your picture in the mornings;
And keep my vigil by the light’s burning;
My mind gives my body quiet warnings,
But they both succumb to my heart’s yearning.
I watched over you in your final days:
Keeping your tumours dry and your eyes wet;
Though cancer has its insidious ways,
Its horrors could not make my love forget.

I’ve your ashes in a pot, atop flowers;
So I may yet sit with this part of you.
I know the sea will claim this too, in hours;
But no power can take my love from you.
I shall, in time, not softly cry at night;
But now, sweet girl, I just bid you good night.