IN ADVANCE OF PARTING

to my sister, passing away wherever. whenever that may be

 for Sharon Foster Douglas

There be none of beauty's daughters with a magic like Thee.

Lord Byron, Stanzas for Music

there's an emptiness as if half the stars have left the sky

and someone says off camera in the third person: theyll not be coming back

as if the sails can no longer tack

as if all hearts are split asunder

in all the lands there are down under 

and the fairytale kingdoms wax and wane

and Pluto's bride a hyacinth becomes

and the last wave arising like a dragon cloud

takes up the whole horizon and is booming now

I have lost my chart the key to curtained chambers in the dark

where there are no presentiments but only blessed sleep;

no shell of a document is going to tell me where she is;

I can't speak in my native tongue even as it is

for nothing is native now

that a sense of absence mars the Sun

but music, endless music pouring from her small hands.

long summer afternoons in the piano studio of my Grandmother.

mary angela douglas 23 may 2023