Creature Speak

The world became a little less bright that day.  

A degree of light went away, mostly imperceptible to the naked eye.  

Mornings in Spring gained a haze.  

The sun wept to lose your smile and serenity in his radiance.  

How you loved to bath in it. 

It took a few days for his tears to come because he was stunned.

Birds choked on their songs.  The bay was all too calm.  

And the wind fell to the ground and dispersed like a whisper crashing upon a wall built of stone so no one hears.  

But we all felt something lost.  

The flowers you kissed with the adoration of your eyes and fingertips drooped and sank when the hearse came 

and the gargoyles awakened to take your body to the fire.  

Ashes never sang when your spirit flew on Angel’s wings to God’s house to get your own.  

And you don’t sing to me anymore.  

And when your song went quiet, faeries forgot how to dance for a moment, and mermaids forgot how to get home.

I saw you in every purple and lavender, every lilac and pink.  

And in the flight patterns of birds, and every summer gleam upon the water.

I feel you now mostly in the heart you implanted in your daughter.  

And I wonder if I will ever love like you did and truly live in your honor.

For your legacy was love, and the maritime ballet of sparkles upon the waves on sunny days. 

Even though my eyes and skin always sought the twilight of Saturn, I’ll meet you in sunlight in fields by the sea, 

and in the smile you gave me, 

and in the glimmer of stars who blink in the night that is not so dark because they know where you are.

On a distant shore of a cosmic ocean, you wait for me.  

I visit you in memories and dreams, and in my wistful reveries on beaches of your bequest, 

until we meet again.

Copyright © Sheyorah Naify, 2021
In Memory of my Beloved Mother
April 30 1958 - April 12 2018