DEATH OF A PHILOSOPHY TEACHER
- May 22
- 1 min read
By Brendan Craig
I understand that space-time
reaches out in all directions
like black silk.
But that says nothing
about the feeling
that I am here
and now
where you cannot be.
And I remember thirty years from here
we met by chance
on a Noumea beach tide
because our travels crossed
paths on white sand.
But that says nothing
about an 11-year-old boy wide-eyed
at the curving mystery
of porcelain-skinned young women.
I have seen the way grey cancer eats
the red organs that nourish it.
But that says nothing
about the tremors of pain
that swell through a community
and drain blood from faces.
I have watched proud white dogs
sit at a whisper
still as marble.
But that says nothing
about the black pool
of a poodle’s eye
or the tilt of a dog’s head
at a lacquered coffin.
I know you were in that box
and not in that box
in the church.
But that says nothing
of the crimson sense of you
among and between us.
I know they pulverize the bones
that fail to burn in cremation.
But that says nothing
of the strength and persistence of love
or the fine grit of bitterness.
Christine
I know you loved to say you taught philosophy.
But when you hugged me and held
and held and held
I wanted to say
that there was nothing I could say -
but I said nothing.