Bearing witness

I’m not at that bedside when life ebbs from it,

I’m not at the riverbank when the pyre’s lit.

But I’m lessened all the same wherever I am,

and I bear witness in the way my life permits.

And I bear witness to each of those lonely trips,

to the vast, unending silence of silent lips.

I hold it cradled within the heart of my life

through every throb of happiness and all hardships.

A close and a favourite relative has passed away back home and I do not have the heart today to craft and polish fancy metaphors.  Writing it as it comes, the good (and there was much good, he was such a lively and fun person that just hearing his voice was a mood-lift! Really, he could give the term joie-de-vivre an inferiority complex!), the bad, and the ugly.  His daughter is making a lonely trip today, the loneliest possible, starting out from USA to India, the longest and the most terrible of journeys for anybody, and although I can't be with her as I want to be, I am there in spirit. Remembering, honouring, celebrating and mourning him every step of the way.