Of Purpose and Life After Death
I awoke last night
Shrouded in grief
And the scent of early mourning
To thoughts that rang
In chamber of mind
And lingered there
Until only smoky obscura remained
And it is this strain of thought
I held onto in my search for you:
People burn
Some burn down
Many burn out
Few burn bright
Like star fallen light
As we all burn through time
And when one burns
In such a way
That they engulf the sun
And The light emitted
Nearly impossible to stare down
It is a high heat reaching explosion
And fever pitch before it is snuffed out
As quickly as it came
In bittersweet tragedy
The pain of what is meant to be
That those few whose warmth
Becomes life
Breathed into souls
Heavy with the weight of living
And blood runneth cold
In flesh of my flesh
In what seems as winter never-ending
It is in the after glow
Of immeasurable light
Such as yours
That the thawing can begin.
So there I sat see-sawed
On the edge
Of dream and
Conscious thought —
In reflective haze
Staring blankly at the place
You once occupied
And the vacuum you left behind
As this final comfort comes to mind:
That the light that emanates
From sun to earth
Is light that first sparked
8 minutes and 20 seconds past
So imagine
As far as you are now
But as bright as you have burned
How long the warmth of your afterglow
Will spread across this universe
And how many generations henceforth will be healed by it
I suppose that is legacy
And as hard as death might try
Life is eternal
In the light you leave behind
