Coupling

“…whether it is husband and wife coupling in their love and birthing a child; whether it is a widow coupling with the memory of a deceased husband; all love is born of the conflict that dialectical consciousness acknowledges.”
–Matthew Fox, Original Blessing

It wasn’t supposed to happen
like that.

You’d flame out like the Challenger
disintegrating in mid-leap skyward –
not crumble and wither and fail
fighting inch by inch
month by month
even unconscious
for your life.

I’d carry on a bright and burning torch
of conviction, empowerment, challenge,
not sink into isolation, confusion, paralysis
not fall silent and lost
as a child abandoned in a crowd
as a monocle without a lens
as a moon without a sun.

It wasn’t supposed to happen
that way.

Emptying your office
I disgorged our memory chests
saw you transforming from image-maker to visionary;
saw me burying my being in your mission,
issues, projects, goals and views…
quashing Quixote under a corporate cloak,
daggerless and drowning in pages
of proprietary jargon for a paycheck.
My body paid the price; free-
lancing, I recovered.
One year later, you started the journey
that would strip you like Inanna
traveling drumless into darkness.

“His work was too big for his body,” the shaman said. “For him
to continue his mission, he needed to transition to spirit.” All I knew
was – you were gone. It wasn’t
supposed to happen like that.

Years, numb years,
before traveling four paths of heretical hope dispelled
the fog, awoke my being; gave glimpses of
my life, my purpose, salvaged like generations’ mosaic
of shattered pottery, like grandmothers’ scraps for a patchwork
quilt, held tenuously together by morphic field,
waiting to be stitched into wholeness.

Today the Day of the Dead approaches,
I greet it just shy of half-centennial (you expected
to die at 50; the five years following, you said, were gift). For
the first time I am sensing your presence, doubling
in tears at your passing touch…
I see the seed of larger legacy you carried,
a remembered image linking centuries, ceremonies, cultures,
visions, dances, traditions, Teachers and dreams to in-
form a half-glimpsed possibility for me: what if…?

The question glitters tonight like Challenger sparks,
like Danae’s golden rain midway between earth and sky.