Days

I met you

the moment

you met your husband

and even then

you looked nothing like

a child

there was a knowing

in you Sara

something anciet

something gut-centred

that shunned belly laughter

and stuck to sorrow

like religion

I met you the day

you met your husband

and you have stayed with me,

clung to me

stained yourself into me

and I find myself

seeking the you in me

The day we learned

there was sickness in you

I wasn't surprised

the universe always handed you immensity

it chose you

and you rose up to meet

each indignity

each betrayal

each injustice

like a serene warrior

The last day I came to see you

I saw death

already settling in

and I feared you

because you had

travelled so far beyond me,

beyond us

I felt your swollen belly

your rakish back

i touched your bones

and your sickness

and through it

i felt your

altering soul and I knew

there were numbers now

to your days

The day you died

I felt all the disease

and wrongness

lift off of you

and I was washed in

the memory of your beauty

I lost all sight of you

sick

and could only conjure you

as I loved you most

tall

contemplative, luminous

and all the days I had

with you filled me,

came to me

in moments

images

grey skirt

bone white fingers

grace of countenance

and now

my days without you

are filled with you

and I turn myself

away

from the truth that is too much

to big

too sacred

too sad to bear

I want one more day

one more day

to sit with you

in a goldrush town

and sing from our hearts

and laugh from our bellies

and talk of floods and mountains

and heroes and

joys and sorrows that

ring in the street and

rise up with the dust

and connect us

to this place

this place of endless days which

melt backward to eternity

and go forward to infinity

where memories grow

sweeter in the telling

and stories are passed

like gifts

from mouth to

ear to mouth to ear . . .

I want one more day with you alive

before you pass into that

place

where you know you like

Cameron and Barker and Nettie

and Alan and Bentley and Faythe

who live in the dust

and the mud and the wind

I want one more day

to swallow your face

to grip your spirit

to reel with you in a storm

I want

one more day