You died in our arms on the first day of Spring
Your illness came with no warning, your lungs full
Of tumors
And you could not empower your great heart
Any
Longer.

We did manage a farewell
Yet …
Something is missing

Still.

**********

I am no Tennyson
Probably wouldn’t care to be one
Yet in my own compression of being
I,
Like you,
Have crossed over the bar.

***

All the months of winter lay behind me
On the Key,
When the Gulf water was too chilly to swim out beyond
The bar.

Oh
It was nice enough, like a beach postcard,
Protected
You know…
On the shore side
Of the bar.

But it was too safe
Too sterile
Too much with us
To shine in my memory.

So this morning I swam out to the bar
And dove beyond it.

There were deep and dark
Waters
There
Rife
With schools of fish
Lurkng crabs
Hulking shapes
Seen in the half light
While my empathic lungs
Almost burst
In the
Wonder
And the
Terror
Of it.

I shot to the surface
And thought I was insane
Remembered sharks eating appendages
In movies,
Imagined
Jaws
Food-processing my genitals
And my blood
Filling
The sea.
And I thought…
Ok.

For is this not what I have sought for years
The unexpurgated experience
Of Mystery?

Calmly I breathed chi down from the heavens.
I brought the power of Mother Earth
Up
From
The great Sea.

Suffused with energy
And either imagined or actual
Protection
I dove down into the
Cold
Muted gray green
Cancerous
Deep
Again

And
Again.

In the cycle of events
Each time I came up to the
Galaxy of air
I had to fight myself
By myself
Over and over
And
Over
And
Over.

***

Life, light, time, deathful tides
All glimmer-shifting about me
I finally swam back to
The bar.
I stood there, knee deep
In
Amniotic water

And I looked toward shore
With its pelican-gloried
Golden
Alabaster beach.

I looked out beyond the bar
Into the void of
Mystery,
Inscrutable
Beauty,
And aloof
And intangible
Sentience.

And I could not choose which way
To go.

So I opened my arms in two directions,
Laughed at the
Miserly
Cosmos
And fell onto my back and
Simply
Levitated

There above
The bar

Thankful for
Another day
And the warm sun
On my skin.

-For Blue

Read more of Jamon's poetry by visiting his website, The Poet's Hovel.