DAY OF FLIGHT

For N.

(after a line from CS Lewis)

Grey dark heavy as stone but for a patch
of light on your pale shoulders
and a tidal wave (of grief) from nowhere –
we could not save you.
Sun came down and night came down;
shredded orange sky.

Your absence is like the sky, spread over everything.
The moon tide, like your dusk-dark room,
keeps pulling me, spinning on its axel;
blue sky/earth meet like past/present.
Against the ocean’s current.

Mayday Mayday (as we navigate a whole new kind of lost-at-sea,
too late, but we respond day and night–
in hindsight)

I keep wondering, as we ride out the waves
and wander the shoulders of shore,
mayday: are you out there somewhere
just beyond our radar?