Friends wonder, do you find yourself in tears?
Still mourning father’s loss this winter’s past?
As now your father’s gone for one half year,
“Are you okay?” The question that they ask.
Most days I am. I laugh and think of Dad,
How a little thing would please Father still.
As a lily fights for sunlight, he’d be glad.
The sound of a young finch’s first loud trill.
On other days, my world is grey, dank, bleak.
I see his hat, his watch, and grief spills out.
It doesn’t last as long; I am not weak.
A brief rich downpour in a summer’s drought.
In my world, it is fleeting, is my grief.
Death will not take two lives, that Janus thief.
David L. Stanley. July, 2019
