How to love, For Lily

How do I let you go?

I wish you would walk by my side forever,

Rest your head on my foot,

Each night when we fall asleep.

Wake up in the morning,

A new walk,

A new journey

A new adventure.

I never want to forget your gaze,

Curious,

Patient and loving
waiting for me always

The times I left

And you waited behind the door.

It must have felt like eternity.

How do I spend eternity without you?

How do I decide when it is time

To let you go?

I do not want to decide.

hard

it was to have made this decision two times before.

For my father

Whose battle with death
Agonized over many days.

Even after they removed the tubes

That fed and kept him alive.

You were there

When my mother died.

How hard it was to decide to let her go

Cracked ribs,

Brain death,

Organs shutting down.

What choice did we have but to let her go?

Life sustaining means

Removed.

Her heart stopped within minutes.

Yet in my

dreams

I would hear her say,

I wasn’t ready.

I was consumed with grief.

You Embraced my heart,

Knowing how to comfort me.

Insulate my world

With a feeling of security,

Unconditional love and companionship.

My heart aches and aches

And your own heart ,

Sick and dying,

Still knows how to love.

by J.Hamilton

Frozen

Hard to sleep.

The wind moans,

As if searching for something or someone.

The wind chimes play their plaintiv song,

Their metal beams swinging hard against the wind.

I should have taken them down in the fall

Maybe I am a little afraid of snow storms.

And the deep cold that crawls inside your bones,

And

The echo of death

In the wind,

In the falling snow,

And the memory of a

Woman

Who wandered away from her house

One year ago

In a midnight storm

Found frozen to death the next morning.

The harsh winters

Are relentless,

Relentlessly unforgiving.

I always find frozen animals

Under a blanket of snow

In the dead of winter.

Usually the morning

After a storm

When the wind has died down

And the sun lights the path

Of snow

Shining like broken glass.

By J.. Hamilton

Weight of silence

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The wind whirls

And howls,

Bangs against the window.

Blinding what snow,

Falling

Fast

On the sleeping garden.

The weight of your silence,

Of secrets

Just beneath.

By Julie Hamilton

Temple of trees

Snow is beginning to settle on the

stones and dirt of a

forest path.

I see you spreading blankets among

Broken branches

Building your nest,

Tucked away in a temple of trees,

That are bare

And sleeping.

Do the trees shelter you from the wind

In that alcove of fallen branches

You have made your home?

Do you hear the howl of coyotes

At night

When you try to sleep

On the Earth’s floor?

Do they know you live among them?

They den not far from you where you are.

You reside here

Quietly,

Inside

A blanketed earth,

Branches above you,

Their long, steady arms

Stretched above you,

Both ways,

An embrace.

By J.. Hamilton