I Still Hear Your Voice

I Still Hear Your Voice

            I still hear it

your voice in the halls

vibrating up through the

floorboards

            calling my name

singing ‘High Flying Bird’

shooing the cat away from

your desk lamp or while you

sewed well-traveled patches

on your quilt

            I still hear it

your voice

your voluminous laughter

echoing in the rooms you’ve

left empty

living-rooms, dining-rooms

dance halls

            and I still hear it

the buzz

of machines in time

with your lungsful

drawing oxygen deep

exhaling in emergency

            it’s always there

the slow outbreath of your last

moment

            an Angel’s soft sigh

you bloomed in freedom

I wither in grief

I still hear it

the sounds of you

                                    especially

when I feel stranded in my joys

            and when I hear it

I look for the rendering

of your

human guise

for a soliloquy

any kind of refrain

I still hear it

            and it kills me

***

Another poem for my dearly departed sister. When I feel the hurt settle in, the reality, the only way I know how organize it is on the page.

I miss you, Big Sister.

In propinquity,

Nic

Twenty-fourth May, Two Thousand Sixteen

Twenty-fourth May, Two Thousand Sixteen

tin angel troubadour ages

intrepid bar-stool bard weakens

tambourine tackle

                dolefully downcast

this the news

twenty-fourth may, two thousand sixteen

**

Bleary-eyed, I took my work station this morning, booted up my PC, logged into my email, and then promptly tuned into Tom Power on CBC Radio 2. It’s my morning ritual. No deviating unless I’ve got something to pop in the toaster or I need to set the kettle to boil for tea. It was a few minutes before 7am, the news was on when I heard in two separate breaths, today was Bob Dylan’s 75^th birthday (I smiled as I put myself to work) and Gord Downie had brain cancer (I stopped smiling).  It took a second for me to absorb what had just blasted me through my rutty speakers. I burst into tears and sent a text to my best bud, in shock, in horror, gut-wrenching heartsickness spreading all through me. It has lasted all day. It will last forever. My poet love, my literary comrade, my rock ‘n’ roll sweetheart: brain cancer. Incurable. Unbelievable.

The Hip are set to tour this summer, for Gord, for themselves, for us. It was hard to keep the tears in listening to their music peppered through Power’s show this morning, a show is going to be both extremely joyful and painful all at once; knowing it will likely be the very last time any of us will encounter he and his microphone.

A beautiful mind is being taken from us. Not today, not tomorrow, not even next month: but when they say incurable, well … it is an injustice to the world. I can’t understand in these instances, what kind of God robs the world of a person who delights with their talents and doesn’t steal the evil-doers.

It is difficult to imagine a world without him in it and for now we don’t have to. We give him our love, our prayers, our courage, our voices. For as long as we are able.

Courage, for Gord.

In propinquity,

Nic