John Muro
The first time I lost sight of you,
you were newly orphaned and lying
in front of me tethered to a bed soon
after the cock-sure surgeons had stopped
your heart. Free of reprimands, your eyes
were fixed upon the futile beauty of day-old
flowers and the phantom shadows that fell
across pursed curtains, extinguishing all light,
followed by days that felt like the whole world
had fallen into darkness and ended. Years later,
after you passed, I went to visit a psychic near
Cambridge who claimed to speak on your behalf,
asking that I try to remember you as you were
before the pain of separation and the fatal fall
from self, and then, on my way home, recounting
those times I had failed you and certain that I would
grow old alone, I heard you, breathless still, pointing
out the improbable miracle of ancient, white cedars
rising towards heaven like wind-blown arrows scattered
across the ridgeline’s bright anarchy of stone.