everafter — for Rob Ganson

"The supermoon will find you tonight, bathe you in new tides of hope and beauty. She may hide, pull your spirits up from behind the clouds, but spirits will rise and fog recede, deeds of goodness push back against the darkness and epiphanies germinate like eager seeds. This, I have seen in a dream. Today, I will fold sacred words into a paper swan, float her down a threatened stream to a river where grandfather fish follow a biological imperative, and finally, should fate send her there, to the inland sea. In my dream, she made it all the way." 

— Rob Ganson 

mourning carves us, 

silent as water,

fluent as shadows pursued by dusk

where do we go from here?

is there still an everafter?

boundaries are altered as storms rearrange horizons,

a mighty protest to protect earth's frail, broken skin

from our terrible, troubled, trembling hands

our mouths agape, 

we attempt to form words without sound,

fragments without meaning

we plant orchards knowing we will not see 

those bright blooms burst into song

or savor their burgeoning fruits

we wait for unexpected moments 

when our own wild gardens will suddenly seize us, 

then return us to parched and hungry soil

brimming just beneath banks meant to hold us back,

we boil, roiling over edges of what once mattered most

yet, time does not exist or allow tears to descend, 

for dew shall rise again into strange and swirling mist, 

creating clouds that break and fall into unseen, untamed rivers

perhaps a turbulent aftermath is what we fear most,

tender gestures lost which we would quietly dread,

since we understand evolution, 

must acquiesce rhythms of hymnals 

as we won't be there to stem the tide

to shape and nurture its nascent strand 

or kiss its ancient ache away